We the people.

Just who are these people?

Are they every American citizen, or just
the given majority in any jurisdiction at any time?

Are those people the ones in charge of whom the
constitution applies?

Are those people supposed to make sure that their constitution applies only to the people
they agree with, approve of, accept or tolerate?

Just in case the we the people don't like it when what they call activist judges protect the minority from the tyranny of the we the people majority, those people turn around and amend their state constitution to make sure that the we the people tyranny prevails.

That's exactly what "we the people" have been doing, especially since the same-gender marriage issue boiled over in Hawaii. The Hawaiin Supreme Court ruled that the minority gay and lesbian population should be able to marry. Then a self-appointed majority flew over the Pacific, landing on Hawaii to make sure that the majority tyranny prevailed.

It only seems like New York state came late to the wedding party, when in fact the New York courts ruled years ago that it recognized the rights of LGBT people. In one case, the courts awarded a man the right to live in the co-op apartment he had shared with his now deceased partner.

New York's constitution was never challenged in the courts, though there were people ready to take up the fight.

Instead, it took a few village mayors to try and test the law. First, New Paltz mayor Jason West held marriage ceremonies one late winter day.

But it takes someone who has the fortitude to carry on to change civil rights. West was not the man to do that. A politician and a judge decided to bring criminal charges against West. Unlike civil rights workers in the 1960s and the underground resistance in Europe during World War II, West jumped backwards as fast as he could.

He left the struggle for unconditional constitutional equality to the queers. And the new generation of queer activists took up the cause. Leading the charge were three State University of New Paltz students, James, Wazina and Jessica. They hitched their star of freedom to the meteor of Charles Clement and Maurice Zinken, who married legally in the Netherlands. These two men own the LaFevre House Bed and Breakfast. Now all of them work together in the B&B.

They declared a summer of love for New Yorker gay and lesbian spouses.

Together with Reverend Kay Greenleaf, a Unitarian Universalist minister, they brought together heterosexual and queer ministers to conduct wedding ceremonies all over the Catskill Mountain county during that summer.

Billiam Van Roestenberg and Jeff McGowan, friends of Charles and Maurice, convinced Mayor West to take up the queer cause. They were the first to marry outside New Paltz Town Hall. But the minute the issue got too hot for them, they backed away too. About two years later, married life was not what they bargained for, so they chose the American tradition shared by 50 percent of hetero couples, and ended their relationship.

The marriages were legally questionable from the beginning. West was the mayor of a town, and only the village clerks of court could issue marriage licenses. So West made up his own piece of paper he called a license. Bill and Jeff did not take their breakup to court. So it is unknown if the New York courts would have recognized the arrangement anyway.

After West did his thing that one and only day, the out gay mayor of Nyack, and a clerk in the Ithaca city office issued marriage licenses, until Eliot Spitzer, then state attorney general, now governor, told them to cut it out. Again instead of engaging in civil disobedience, the kind that queers have been doing for decades ever since the Stonewall Inn uprising, the kind that ACTUP used to push pharmaceutical companies to create medication for people living HIV and AIDS, these older queers and supporters also backed down.

Now that Spitzer is governor, he suddenly decided that he would announce that he is actually for same-gender marriage. TA DA!

Let's see how far he gets before the theocRatic heterosupremacist tyrannists swope into New York. They don't have far to swope. They have already gotten Massachusetts lawmakers to put a condition on their constitution making sure that the tyranny of the majority prevails, creating an amendment reserving special marriage rights only to heterosexuals. Maybe the people of Massachusetts will do what Arizona citizens did, rejecting an special rights amendment.

If they don't follow Arizona voters lead, they will join the other states voters who have decided that gay and lesbian Americans are not entitled to the right of due process.

Just like the theocRats did in the last presidential election, the Massachusetts constitutional amendment will be on the next presidential ballot. The theocRats are running out of ways to exploit the queer minority to line their pockets with ill gotten gains.