My friend Tim Jarrett has posted about an incident in Massachusetts where an employee of Brookstone was fired, ostensibly for opposing marriage between same-sex couples. But further examination shows that this was not the case.

Apparently Peter Vadala was talking with a female coworker, and she referred to her upcoming honeymoon. Vadala congratulated her and asked where “he” was taking her. She responded that her fiancée was a woman. He became a little uncomfortable, and she noticed, so apparently she brought it up in front of him a few more times that day. Finally, at the end of the day, when she brought it up for a fourth time, he claims to have responded that he believed homosexuality was bad and immoral. Someone else overheard him, and he was brought to HR and was subsequently fired for violating Brookstone’s antidiscrimination policy.

Mass Resistance, an anti-marriage organization, has raised the alarm, claiming that this is what happens when marriage for same-sex couples becomes legal: Christians start getting fired for expressing their beliefs!

That’s bunk.

Now, one could argue whether or not Vadala should have been fired for expressing a personal opinion about homosexuality and whether his statements actually constituted discrimination. Maybe, maybe not.

But that’s not the issue here, because that’s not the point Mass Resistance is trying to make. Mass Resistance is trying to turn this into an argument against same-sex marriage, when same-sex marriage is actually a huge red herring here. It has nothing to do with what happened.

In the video on that page, Mr. Vadala himself states that he was fired “because I expressed my belief that homosexuality is wrong. That’s the reason that I was fired.”

He also says that at the end of the workday, after the employee again brought up her fiancee, he told her, “Regarding homosexuality, I believe that’s ‘bad stuff.'”

He then refers to the fact that he was just “expressing my sincere belief that homosexuality is wrong.”

What Mr. Vadala is really trying to do is defend a right to speak out against homosexuals, not a right to speak out against married gay couples. Mr. Vadala would have been fired even if same-sex couples could not legally marry in Massachusetts. Here’s why.

What if the incident took place in, say, Maine, where the marriage of same-sex couples remains illegal? Suppose the employee had repeatedly mentioned not her fiancée, but her female life partner, and Mr. Vadala got tired of it and decided to respond, “Regarding homosexuality, I believe that’s ‘bad stuff,'” and then later stated, “I was just expressing my sincere belief that homosexuality is wrong”?

The termination letter from Brookstone states that “we maintain a healthy, safe and production work environment free from discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, physical or mental disability.” Presumably this policy existed even before same-sex couples had the legal right to get married in Massachusetts; most companies have had such anti-discrimination policies in place for years, since long before same-sex couples could legally marry in any U.S. state.

One could argue whether or not Vadala’s statement constituted a firing offense. But one cannot argue that the facts of this incident have anything to do with marriage. The outcome would have been the same either way.

So let’s not pretend that legal marriage between same-sex partners is going to oppress people because of their religious beliefs. Our society has long enshrined the principles of both religious liberty and civil rights. Occasionally they conflict; this is nothing new. Over the years, we have developed rules to deal with such situations. Discrimination against gay people is already illegal in many states and will remain so. And that’s what groups like Mass Resistance are really interested in: not discrimination against same-sex marriage, but discrimination against gay people, plain and simple.

This result in Maine makes me think about the complicated issue of popular initiatives and referenda. Any time marriage equality goes to the people for a direct statewide vote, it loses. The exception was one time in Arizona, but then the anti-gay side tried again and they won. Loss after loss leaves me frustrated and hurt, and I’m sick of these things getting onto the ballot. Popular initiatives are stupid, I tell myself, because the general public is too uninformed to vote on an issue directly.

But I don’t know. On the one hand, we are not a democracy, we are a representative democracy. We elect people to govern us and make policy decisions, because there are certain people who have a better grasp of the issues than Joe Q. Public does. It’s a principle of a representative democracy that you entrust governance to the representatives you’ve voted for.

But a hundred years ago, referenda and initiatives became popular. Why? Because legislative bodies were seen to be taken over by special interests. Obviously, this is still true today on many issues.

But shouldn’t you only resort to public initiatives when it involves an issue where the legislature is captive to special interests? This is often the case with economic issues, but how is it the case with gay rights? If anything, the people who oppose gay equality are better organized than those who support it. Aren’t they the special interest?

And yet, you can argue that it was the people’s decision to entrust most of its power to the legislatures, and that the people can choose to reserve certain issues for themselves if they want to. You can argue that if enough people feel passionately about a particular issue, rightly or wrongly, then the people can validly decide to reserve the decisionmaking power on that issue to themselves. Clearly there are plenty of people who are passionately opposed to gay equality, and even though they are guided by mistaken impressions of gay people, can provide no logical reason to prevent gay couples from marrying, and can provide no clear answer why other people’s marriages affect them, they are still the people. Or at least they are a portion of the people. And if they can get a majority of voters to agree with them, well, maybe we have to accept that this is a valid expression of democracy?

Except that individual rights should not be subject to democratic vote. Majorities should not be able to take away the rights of minorities.

Also, you can argue that legislators are better informed than the public, because they actually have to debate the issues, whereas the public is too busy with their daily lives. Except… there are plenty of stupid, uninformed legislators out there.

In the end, it’s pointless to argue whether the popular initiative process is valid or not. It’s a reality, and supporters of gay equality have to deal with them.

They can actually be a good thing in the long run, because they provide an opportunity for us to interact with voters — our fellow citizens — and to try to convince them that we’re right. Courts are sometimes necessary as a last resort, but achieving social change through litigation can lead to lazy activism. It’s one thing to convince four or five judges to rule in your favor; it’s another thing to convince your neighbors, and ultimately, the latter is more important, because it is more lasting. Court decisions can be reversed by amendment or by massive social resistance. Ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, virtually no schools in the South were racially integrated. It took the popular uprisings of the late 1950s and the 1960s to lead to real change.

Yes, there are plenty of people who just want the legal rights we are entitled to as Americans. When you’re out of work and in poor health and you can’t get onto your partner’s health insurance plan because the insurance company doesn’t consider you to be married, you don’t particularly care about winning over the hearts and minds of your neighbors; you just want your rights. But ultimately, because we live in a civil society, it’s important to have the support of your fellow citizens, or even just a grudging tolerance — if only to ensure that once a right is acknowledged, the people won’t decide to take that right away from you.

Popular initiatives may be a pain in the ass, and they may clash with the idea of representative democracy. But they give us a chance to change public opinion. And with public opinion on your side, you have a much stronger foundation for real, permanent change.