The Town That Voted Wrong

The problem: a town votes, six to four, to bar a religious minority's meeting hall — the vote was legal and popular; say what, if anything, makes it wrong.

Start with the trap Unit 2 disarmed: if the town's code is the final standard, the four are wrong by definition — that was cultural relativism's own-society consequence, and its argument failed on arrival. So the vote is examinable. King's test examines it: a rule drafted by those it exempts and binding those it silences is difference made legal — it fails on harmony and on sameness at once. "It passed legally" was answered in one line back at the legality defense: a status is not a justification. The consistency requirement asks its standing question: name the relevant difference between the six's worship and the four's. Popularity is a head count, not a difference; no other candidate survives saying aloud. The contract lens finishes the structure: rules rational people accept on condition others accept them — no one behind any veil licenses majorities to bar minorities, because everyone behind a veil might be the four. And the rule-of-law objection, so often aimed at protesters, points the other way here: it is the ordinance that teaches contempt for law, by making law a weapon that only cuts one direction. Four independent tools, one verdict — and this capstone states it, because a case the arguments have stopped contesting is no longer a contested case: the vote was legal, popular, and wrong. Majorities are a procedure inside justice, never a substitute for it.