Posted on 09/06/2015 9:09:39 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
Did our founders, after drafting a Declaration of Independence, fighting a war with England, and then sitting down to pen a national governing document (the Constitution) put in that document the right of a majority of federal judges to make laws for the entire nation?
Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis is testing the claim that five unelected Supreme Justices have the authority to overrule a state constitution that she took an oath to uphold and a federal Constitution that says nothing about same-sex marriage.
Robert Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice, had this to say on the issue in a Facebook post:
“Inasmuch as SCOTUS so obviously overreached and acted as though it had the power to amend the Constitution (and certainly as legislators), Kim Davis should not comply. I disagree with my friends Maggie Gallagher, Rod Dreher, and Ryan Anderson on this one. The Obergefell decision has no more validity than the Dred Scott case (or the Fugitive Slave Law) had in Lincoln's day. Civil disobedience is commendable. The only problem with Kim Davis's position (aside from the fact that she would better ground her rationale in the illegitimate action of the Five Lawless Justices than in religious liberty; h.t. Brian Troyer) is that mass resistance has not occurred on the part of Christians.”
The states have rolled over on the question of judicial supremacy, and Congress is too busy solidifying its power base to take on a nation-dividing fundamental issue. Governors don’t want to make waves and get involved in a protracted legal battle with the Federal government that has unlimited money to spend and ways to hold back federal funding (money it took from the states in taxes). Wouldn’t it be great if a dozen or so states banded together and said no to the usurpation of their states’ authority?
"It is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy." ~ Thomas Jefferson, Ltr to W.C. Jarvis, 1820
Ping for later...
Who cares what the racist slave owner says. -sarcasm but seriously that’s what they will say
What did Mr. Jefferson see as a solution?
Smart and brave were the founders - stupid and simpering idlers are those who inherited the gift of Freedom.
“Kim Davis is testing the claim that five unelected Supreme Justices have the authority to overrule a state constitution that she took an oath to uphold and a federal Constitution that says nothing about same-sex marriage.”
Doesn’t her argument apply just as much if the national law was changed by the US legislature and signed into law by the president? Or if the state she was in passed ‘gay marriage’ by legislature or a referendum.
‘Gay marriage’ is an impossibility and against her conscience as guided by her religious beliefs. Seems to me that is going to apply no matter how the state gets there.
Freegards
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.” -Thomas Paine
It has always been the Left, that has used the Supreme Court, to bend, defy, and change the outcomes of referendums voted upon the The People.
Now, with the Supreme Court, in their decision, attempting to actually make UnConstitutional law, a Jane Q. Public has stood up, and said, “No.”
I bet the aged geezers of that court, are getting apoplexy, with every day that this courageous woman says, “No.” To think, an American citizen actually knows better than the aged members of that court?
If she was in one of the few states that actually passed ‘gay marriage’ by popular vote, doesn’t her argument and position still apply?
Freegards
Yes.
Every single person who has resisted gay marriage in a concrete way—the bakers, florists, clerks, etc.—has been a Protestant.
There has not been a syllable of moral guidance regarding resistance to the Supreme Court’s tyranny out of any Catholic bishop.
I think it was something about watering the tree of liberty from time to time....
This last week, I’ve wondered about how perplexed the founding fathers would be about this entire situation.
It is a shame that Mrs. Davis doe not have several hundred county cleerks joining her in prison.
As I understand it nearly every state that actually voted, did so in the negative and then had it overturned by the courts. California I know is true. Please let me know which states voted otherwise - because I don’t know of one and need it for arguments.
Interposition
I don’t think the Founding Fathers would have been perplexed at all. They resisted tyranny, and wrote a Constitution that guaranteed freedom to all. They spoke of Unalienable Rights, no federal interference in religion, and standing up to tyranny. They would have been relieved to finally see someone get it.
No it doesn’t apply. Nor is it a justifiable argument here. She wasn’t conscripted, she was elected to perform an administrative duty which by necessity must be performed impartially, this necessity was understood when the job was accepted.
A religious liberty argument is both unjustifiable and doomed to failure.
A justifiable argument is to reject the illegal order of the court.
Kentucky Revised Statute 402.020(1)(d) explicitly forbids issuing marriage licenses to people of the same sex.
KRS 402.020 Other prohibited marriages
(1) Marriage is prohibited and void:
(a) With a person who has been adjudged mentally disabled by a court of competent jurisdiction;
(b) Where there is a husband or wife living, from whom the person marrying has not been divorced;
(c) When not solemnized or contracted in the presence of an authorized person or society;
(d) Between members of the same sex
In what’s left of our country, the Constitution barely hangs by a thread, and in my view that thread has already been severed. Because if one goes by the logic of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has no legislative powers. Those law-making powers were delegated to the Congress. Congress’ limited powers were spelled out in Article 1, Section 8. Making laws about marriage are not in that set of law-making powers.
If that isn’t enough of a guarantee, then there’s the added logic of the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
This is easy for anyone who can read to figure out (but, these days, being able to read looks like it excludes a lot of Americans, especially on the left): Only Congress can make law under the Constitution. The Supreme Court cannot make law. Congress has limited law-making powers spelled out. Marriage laws are not listed in that set of law-making powers. The 10th Amendment reserves such law-making powers about marriage to the States, or to the people.
All that the Supreme Court did was render an Opinion. Anyone can have an opinion. It’s only a delusion, albeit a rather powerful delusion, that a Supreme Court opinion regarding a power that neither it nor the Congress has is therefore actually a law.
The typical person in the US has no understanding of this anymore. From what I can tell from talking to young people, this is no longer taught in civics or government classes in school.
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