Last September I wrote about the curious ubiquity of rock, paper, scissors as a means to legitimately resolve conflict among kids and adults here in South Korea. As I noted, Koreans use rock, paper, scissors as a way to decide all kinds of issues, from the trivial (in what order students will play a classroom game) to the slightly meaningful (who will get a disputed parking spot) to the more meaningful (how a person will spend his weekends over a two-year period). My fellow teachers and I appreciate how unfailingly the winners and losers of rock, paper, scissors abide by the results of the contest. We would love it if we could settle disputes in the same way in the US, but we all understand a very sad truth about contemporary America:

Rock, paper, scissors would never work there.

People familiar with my original essay know that I compared the legitimacy that rock, paper, scissors enjoys here in Korea (as a known, transparent method of decision-making with agreed-upon rules, the results of which everyone involved agrees to abide by, win or lose) with democracy in America (which, theoretically, shares the same characteristics). We use democracy to resolve major disputes in America. If we want to make changes in our societies, we can vote (either directly or through our legislators) to make them. Our national and state constitutions even allow us to amend them (if we have enough votes) in order to make the social changes we want to see more lasting.

Unfortunately, as I noted in my previous essay, over the past 40 years, we have become less and less accustomed to making major social changes through democracy. Instead, we’ve become increasingly accustomed to using force — judicial force (which involves a handful of unelected judges effectively amending state or national constitutions without anyone’s consent), and social or physical intimidation — to make them. More and more, we want the changes we want to see in society made NOW. We’re no longer willing to wait to achieve, or to accept failure in our attempts to achieve, them.

Which brings me to Proposition 8.

On November 4, 2008 over 52% of voters in California approved Proposition 8, a ballot provision to amend the state constitution so that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Proposition 8 was a response to the California Supreme Court’s May, 2008 decision legalizing same-sex marriage in that state. The campaign over Prop. 8 was intense and emotional, and the opposition especially was often vitriolic in its denunciation of the ballot measure and its supporters. That vitriol has extended past the election. Even though Prop. 8 opponents failed in their (well-funded) efforts to convince their fellow citizens to support their cause — and even though some of them admit that there’s good reason to believe that the size of the opposition vote significantly overstated support for same-sex marriage in California — Prop. 8 opponents have been largely unwilling to accept the legitimacy of their fellow citizens’ refusal to support them.

This is an example of why my fellow foreign teachers and I don’t think rock, paper, scissors would work in contemporary America. We wouldn’t keep our promise to abide by the results if we lost (which we’d implicitly make by the act of participating in the game).  We often no longer accept that we can’t get our way. (Witness, for example, the way we’ve unscrupulously borrowed trillions of dollars from future generations over the past few months to continue to fund our unsustainable lifestyles.) The anti-Prop. 8 movement has exemplified this, quite frankly, contemptible side of contemporary America in its attempts to punish Prop. 8 supporters for their political and religious views by blacklisting and physically intimidating them or by judging them in Stalinist show trials.

A well-functioning democracy needs people who will not tolerate the behavior exhibited by many of the opponents of Proposition 8.  Such behavior is better suited to tyrannies, banana republics, or emerging democracies where people don’t trust democratic processes and remain loyal to their tribes or family groups at all costs. It does not belong in America.

A little over 200 years ago, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams ran against each other for the Presidency in a campaign so vitriolic and personal that it made the opposition to Prop. 8 look friendly by comparison. Yet after the election was over, John Adams and the Federalists accepted their loss and stepped aside in favor of Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans in the first peaceful transfer of power between opposition parties in recorded history. While the French Revolution had devolved into tyranny and dictatorship and Napoleon was still trying to conquer Europe, the election of 1800 showed the world that democracy really could work. Now is not the time, 52 Presidential elections later, to let any group impatient with, or unwilling to accept, legitimate democratic change to rob us of the privilege of ruling ourselves in a free society.