Moral Shielding Through Democracy

Now to get the point, one of the more disappointing matters concerning this last election was the various state amendments banning gay marriage that passed. Even several abortion bans were narrowly defeated.

I consider both of these measures to be exactly what I was referring to: illegitimate initiation of violence from the government. I have a feeling many here will agree with me.

So here is my question: Since these measure were settled by direct democracy, would all those who voted for these proposals bear a moral culpability? Should they be held as responsible as if they initiated the violence themselves, as if they personally stopped a woman from getting an abortion or stopped two gay men from having a marriage?

Not accounting for the feasibility of it, consider: if a new government was founded that was bound by a true moral code (simply insert your moral code), should those who have voted for unjust actions by the government (not necessarily what I have mentioned, consider segregation laws or any other possible law that you would consider morally reprehensible) be held responsible for those actions and be punished as if they had done them personally?

I don't see how banning gay marriage or abortion is an act of violence, unless you consider all laws acts of violence. I would call them imfringements on individual liberty.

Well first, let me state the obvious, which you implied yourself; this is impossible. In a democratic state, who would punish the majority for making their decision? By definition, any such punishment would be illegal. Moreover, if banning gay marriage or abortion is an act of violence, as you say, how would punishment for those who favoured the bans not be an act of violence? Frankly, if you hold all violence, which you seem to equate with coersion, as morally wrong and unjustified, then government itself is unjustified, justice is unjustified. You cannot be a libertarian, as libertarians require a government, albeit of very minimal one.

This is what I have never understood about people who say that anarchy is the only just form of society; if you abolish government coercion, which is the essential of government, because coercion is itself unjustified, how can you claim that anarchy, in which each person takes on the role of the government, can be just? That said, I have no problem with anarchy; but anarchy must be a state of affairs in which there are no moral principles or rules, not one which somehow supports freedom, as an absolute right. Anarchy can only be a result of absence of rules, not the system by which a just rule is manifested.

Anarchy does not oppose rules, it merely opposes rulers. Rules are perfectly fine to the anarchist as long as they are consented to and not imposed. Proudhon, for example, insisted that justice rested completely in upholding contractual agreement, with many building upon this idea to form a model for which private individuals meeting together in a marketplace would provide the methods for guaranteeing this.

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It would require a pretty major social revolution, but if people began to understand themselves and act as rational individuals, violence simply would no longer be a productive choice and mutual freedom of all actors would lead to mutual benefit of all actors.