Minority rights can only come from the majority and can only be maintained by the majority in theroy,
I don’t think so, darkbeaver, minority rights come from the framers of the constitution. In our case that is the constitution repatriated by Trudeau and the Charter. It is not upto the majority to grant those rights, there are already enumerated in the constitution.
Thus, if we had a referendum tomorrow and people voted to abolish vote for women, that doesn’t mean women will cease to have the right to vote, it is enshrined in the constitution.
When you say they can only be maintained by the majority, in theory you are right. In theory, the majority can take away women’s right to vote, or bring back slavery for blacks or ban SSM. However, the constitution rightly makes it very difficult (although not impossible) for the majority to take away the rights from the minority.
The only way majority can take rights away from minorities is by constitutional amendment. To achieve that, majority has to elect governments in each and every province (and also federally) which would vote to ban SSM. Then all the governments together can vote to modify the Charter and ban SSM. An almost impossible task.
So I think you are wrong, minority rights do not come from majority, but from the constitution and while in theory majority can take them away, in practice it is almost impossible.