Section 5 of the 14th ammendment directs the congress to make reasonable legislation to ENFORCE the rights of section 1 including the equal protection clause.


The civil rights act of 1866 was reinacted in 1870 as an expression of this section and imposed civil redress for violations of the above amendment. The 15th amendment expressly provided the right to vote. These were all passed directed at freed slaves and were the foundation for the civil rights act of 1965, the voting rights act of 1965 and the civil rights act of 1968.


The amendments recognized the rights and as mentioned previously the supreme court at any time could have held in a majority opinion that any action that infringed on the above mentioned expressed rights would be unconstitutional. This can and has been used to protect lgbt citizens including in the majority opinion on gay marriage.


Section 5 was an acknowledgement that in certain aspects affirmative legislative directions to define discrimination and impose penalties for such behavior, both civil and criminal.


As in the case of the three major acts of the mid 60s they increased direct federal oversight and power over elections and housing policy to make the state more proactive in the preservation of covil rights for minorities instead of just addressing a redress of existing grievances. These acts were extensions of and prescribed by the above mentioned amendments to the constitution. While they are important in the maintinance of minority enfranchisement your continued assertion that the amendments themselves which perscribed fluid legislative enforcement were just NOT ENOUGH or were SUPPLANTED in some way is an exercise in drive by ignorance of inalienable rights.

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