[Tifone]

Yes Jim I agree it is. Expecially because democracy, as all the modern Constituions and the many Charters of Fundamental Rights say, doesn't absolutely mean that "the majority wins". This is "dictatorship of the majority", an abjection of the democracy known even by the ancient Greeks, and is the way some modern countrys work, mine often included.
The real democracy safeguards the minorities and doesn't impose -by violence or by aggressive creation of laws- the values of one culture on the others, expecially on the "grey areas of morality".
So yes, it is a great failure of democracy that the referendums and the "public opinion" are used by the aggressive religious majority to impose its will and culture on everybody in a nation.