Civil rights referendum

A civil rights referendum or human rights referendum is any act of direct democracy which allows for a vote on the granting or amendment of current civil rights, liberties or associations as recognized by a government. Such referenda have frequently been proposed as a means by which the majority of the voting public in a polity, rather than the judicial or legislative chambers of government, could determine what the state should recognize or carry out, while such referenda have been strongly criticized by civil rights organizations and professional bodies as means by which the majority of the public could vote on the rights of a vulnerable minority according to contemporary prejudices.

Civil rights referenda have been frequently proposed by those in ideological rejection against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender rights, most often due to Abrahamic religious objections against homosexuality. In countries where governments have passed, activists have frequently sought to put either a repeal of the new LGBT-affirmative law or a (constitutional or statutory) ban on LGBT-affirmative activities or relationships, and often rely upon a core religious constituency in order to drive the advocacy for such a referendum.

In the United States, civil rights referenda were held in the latter 1900s in order to prohibit same-sex unions (including marriage) and repeal amendments to human rights ordinances which included sexual orientations and gender identities as protected classes. The climax of such legislation was the passage of a record number of U.S. state constitutional amendments banning same-sex unions by referendum in 2004, which coincided with a large turnout for the re-election of George W. Bush to the presidency and Republican legislators to control of both houses of Congress.

Among those who advocate for LGBT rights, the delegation of marriage and other rights to the "will of the people" has propelled the notion of preventing civil rights-related laws and proposals from going to the ballot. This notion was underscored in the aftermath of the passage of California Proposition 8 in California.

In a 2000 Alabama referendum on repealing the 1901 state constitutional ban on interracial marriage, over 40% of the participating electorate voted against repealing the ban. While the ban was rendered unenforceable following Loving v. Virginia, the 40.51% of the populace voting against the repeal . In 1998, South Carolina voters voted 61.95%-38.05% in favor of repealing their own constitutional ban. Harvard University professor Werner Sollors intimated that the laws took so long after Loving to be repealed because of the complex clauses which required large majorities in order to repeal them.

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