# Madison protects atheists

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/madison-protects-atheists/719157>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [May 3, 2015, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/madison-protects-atheists/719157 "2015-05-03T16:51:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/madison-protects-atheists/719157/41 "2015-05-08T16:24:54Z")

</div>

> [@Shodan](#):
>
> This is pretty much what I meant. Change “they can’t amend their constitution” to “they can’t defend their own constitutional amendment”. It amounts to almost the same thing.

There’s a subtle, yet important, difference. Still I agree with you that a lot of people looked the other way in service of getting Prop 8 overturned who otherwise should have been counted on to stand up and complain about the method used. If a constitutional provision can be trashed by the the simple expedient of refusing to defend it, and the federal system does not find that anyone other than the governor’s staff has standing, then constitutional guarantees are a great deal weaker than we expect.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/madison-protects-atheists/719157.md?page=2)