To the editor:

Your editorial of May 7 caught my eye. Had you been referring to a law or ordinance and the option of initiative or referendum, I might have agreed with you (as an example, the smoking ban). However, you were referring to the state constitution. The constitution, either the U.S. or Kansas, is the basic framework of law and has a major objective of protecting the rights of a minority against the tyranny of the majority. Review especially the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known as the “Bill of Rights.”

The process to amend the constitution is made especially difficult in order to preserve these rights. Otherwise, we would probably have provisions in our constitution that allowed freedom of religion, as long as it wasn’t Islam or atheism and a freedom of the press, as long as you didn’t write anything bad about the government in power.

We already have a law on the books defining marriage — we don’t need to change the document that protects individual rights, even if a majority would vote in favor of it. The legislators who voted against the amendment should be applauded for adhering to the oath they took to uphold the constitution.

Jerry Sloan,

Lawrence