Mormons know what it's like to be persecuted. Recently, Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the LDS Church made a speech regarding religious freedom. He noted that Mormons are still under threat of their religious freedom. The comments are partially a response to the Prop 8 battle in California.
Initiatives provide an illuminating example of religion and politics, especially democracy. If mobilized in large enough numbers, a religious group can effectively vote their way onto the ballot and into office. They can do this with little respect to the secularized opponents. This, however, might not be an all bad thing considering the pride we take in democratic values. After-all, we do want to give what the people want. And if it turns out that they have a 67% majority towards extreme conservative social values, then they win.
That scenario, however, does not sound quite right. Though we would like to say that democracy gives us the ability to vote for who or what we want, would we want for us to be able to vote in social values tyranny. If this were acceptable, the smartest thing for any religious group would be to proselytize as many converts as possible, creating a massive voting bloc to rig elections towards certain, acceptable positions. But wait, hasn't this happened before?
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