Posted on 09/03/2015 9:43:23 PM PDT by VinL
Former governor Jeb Bush said that Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk jailed for contempt of court after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, doesn’t have the authority to defy the courts.
“She is sworn to uphold the law, and it seems to me that there ought to be common ground, there ought to be big enough space for her to act on her conscience and — now that the law is the law of the land — for a gay couple to be married in whatever jurisdiction that is,” Bush told reporters in New Hampshire.
Davis’s case and Bush’s response are emblematic of a tactical question that has divided Christian conservatives since the Supreme Court invalidated traditional-marriage laws, with some activists adopting a posture of limited acquiescence and others calling for outright defiance of the judiciary.
With the presidential primary season under way, it’s a debate that could affect the allegiances of the social conservatives who tend to dominate the Iowa Republican caucuses. Davis, in an attempt to resist the Supreme Court’s ruling while avoiding accusations of discrimination, is refusing to issue marriage licenses to anyone in Rowan County, Ky., and she is refusing to allow her assistants to do so as well.
“The court cannot condone the willful disobedience of its lawfully issued order,” U.S. District Court Judge David L. Bunning said. “If you give people the opportunity to choose which orders they follow, that’s what potentially causes problems.”
Senator Ted Cruz, whose presidential prospects depend largely on attracting the evangelical voters who propelled George W. Bush to victory in 2000 and 2004, issued a stentorian endorsement of Davis. “We are a country founded on Judeo-Christian values, founded by those fleeing religious oppression, and seeking a land where we could worship God and live according to our faith, without being imprisoned for doing so,” he said Thursday. “I call upon every believer, every Constitutionalist, every lover of liberty to stand with Kim Davis.
Stop the persecution now.” Former Governor Mike Huckabee, who won the 2008 Iowa caucuses, was similarly strident. “Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country,” he tweeted.
Bush refused to endorse such characterizations of the case: As I said, I think a big, tolerant country ought to be able to forge a consensus. This doesn’t have to be all resolved in Washington. This ought to be resolved at the local level where you find common ground, where a person, clearly based on her religious convictions, should be able to act on her conscience and have people not be discriminated against.
Bush has the political misfortune of using the same rhetoric that Hillary Clinton and Democratic proponents of gay marriage are using to denounce Davis. That’s a mainstream, though hardly unanimous, attitude among social conservatives. “A religious accommodation, like religious liberty in general, is not absolute,” the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson, one of the most prominent traditional-marriage advocates, wrote Thursday. “There are ways in which public policy can create a win-win situation: where all eligible couples can receive a license and where as many employees as possible can be accommodated.” And yet, Bush has the political misfortune of using the same rhetoric that Hillary Clinton and Democratic proponents of gay marriage are using to denounce Davis. “Marriage equality is the law of the land,” Clinton tweeted. “Officials should be held to their duty to uphold the law — end of story.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423555/jeb-bush-hillary-clinton-denounce-kim-davis
Exactly right, Jeb. So why did federal judges and the Supreme Court force their political agenda on the States?
Man, do I ever hate this f***ing jackass ;/
People follow laws, not orders. Or should. There's nothing in the constitution about following "orders".
None of the ‘sanctuary city’ mayors are in jail.
Amnesty via “Executive Order”...
Seems only the Left gets away with doing whatever they want.
I detest him more by the day. God forgive me my thoughts as He wills none should perish, and Heb is certainly headed to the pit.
Jeb says "How High?"
Jeb is a Conservative?!@?!?!?!? He’s WRONG ON EVERY SINGLE ISSUE. We’re not asking for a purist since Trump is a Moderate, but at least he get some things
Looks like Jebby thinks it’s OK to BURN Christians for what they believe. Sad, very SAD.
See ya.
What law is that?
Show me the legislation, drafted and passed by both houses of Congress, that redefined marriage.
Show me where such legislation, duly passed, was signed into law by the President.
The fact is that no such law was ever written, except by the reprobates of the USSC ...
In any case, an unjust immoral law is no law at all.
Jebberwacky Bushwacker - and his cadre of GOPe maggots - can all go straight to Hell and rot for all eternity.
Because they won the last Presidential election, and Presidential elections have consequences. Let’s see it it they don’t win the next.
Bush, like almost all the other GOP presidential candidates, thinks judges make our laws, and that the courts possess the veto power.
Obviously, the guy who let a lawless tinpot probate judge torture an innocent woman to death has never read the constitutions he swore to support and defend.
So is the SCOTUS but that didn’t stop them from not doing so in their recent idiotic ruling.
Yet at Nuremberg, this exact defense did not fly as in, I was just following orders.
GoPe use judges as an excuse for doing nothing because they actually support the judge decision. DEM don’t have this problem. When a judge pass a ruling that DEM disapprove, they’ll just ignore it
So Jeb says she should obey the law, and then tells us we have to overlook the laws violated by thirty million illegal invaders? Hey Jeb, refusing to sanction homosexual marriage is an act of love, the love of Jesus Christ and his teachings.
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