We stand with James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in recognizing that the Constitution is not whatever a majority of Supreme Court justices say it is.UPDATE 3/16/16: 'Gay Marriage' Battle NOT Over in Some States
We remind all officeholders in the United States that they are pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the will of five members of the Supreme Court.
We call on all federal and state officeholders:
To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case.
To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions.
To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons.
To open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evident in Obergefell.
For background, click headlines below to read previous articles:
'Gay Marriage' Stopped in Alabama by Judges
North Carolina Law Allows Magistrates to Refuse 'Gay Marriage'
Gay American Courts Persecute Christian County Clerk Kim Davis
Homosexualist Oregon Persecutes Christian Judge
ACLU Sues Christians for Refusing 'Gay Marriage'
'Christian Rights' Lawsuit: Refused 'Gay Marriage'
Also read how Gay Agenda judicial activism has impacted Christian schools, and Christian students, and Christian consumers, and Christian citizens, and Christian-owned companies, and Christian mom-and-pop businesses, and Christian government officials, and even Christian pastors and churches.
-- From "Beyond Obergefell: Religious Liberties Proponents Survey the New Landscape" by Lana Birbrair, Harvard Law School (HLS) News 10/5/15
One year after a major win in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, advocates for religious accommodation fear Obergefell could herald a narrowing of space for those who oppose same-sex marriage to express their views and could lead to a trampling of their beliefs.
Strong opponents of same-sex marriage, such as Robert P. George ’81, a Princeton University professor and recent visiting professor at HLS, see Obergefell as another in a line of cases, including Roe v. Wade, in which the Court overstepped its bounds and decided an issue better left to voters. Although he hopes that the political tide will change and the decision will be reversed or overturned by constitutional amendment, he says that the bigger battles in the coming years are likely to involve the tension between LGBT and religious rights.
For example, George argues, those who seek to restrict religious liberty exemptions only to “religious activities,” and not to secular actions performed in religious institutions, misunderstand the nature of religious institutions. “Religious people cannot draw that distinction,” he says. “They see religion pertaining to the whole of life, especially when it’s the life of a religious institution.” Among other concerns, George cited the possibility that religious organizations might lose tax-exempt status if they fail to accommodate same-sex marriage.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Statement Calling for Constitutional Resistance to Obergefell v. Hodges" American Principles Project 10/8/15
The Court’s majority opinion eschewed reliance on the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution, as well as the Court’s own interpretative doctrines and precedents, and supplied no compelling reasoning to show why it is unjustified for the laws of the states to sustain marriage as it has been understood for millennia as the union of husband and wife.
The opinion for the Court substituted for traditional—and sound—methods of constitutional interpretation a new and ill-defined jurisprudence of identity—one that abused the moral concept of human dignity.
The four dissenting justices are right to reject the majority opinion in unsparing terms.
Justice Scalia refers to it as “a naked judicial claim to legislative….power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”
Justice Thomas says the opinion “exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority” as it perverts the meaning of liberty into an entitlement to government action.
Justice Alito calls attention to the well-established doctrine that the “liberty” guaranteed by the due process clause protects only those rights “that are deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” and that it is “beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights.” He further points to the opinion’s tendency to reduce the purpose of marriage to “the happiness of persons who choose to marry.” He warns it will be used to “vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy” and is yet another example of the “Court’s abuse of its authority.”
Chief Justice Roberts says “the Constitution leaves no doubt” that the majority’s “pretentious” opinion is incorrect. It even attempts to “sully those on the other side of the debate” in an “entirely gratuitous” manner.
If Obergefell is accepted as binding law, the consequences will be grave. Of the results that can be predicted with confidence, four stand out:
First, society will be harmed by being denied the right to hold out as normative, and particularly desirable, the only type of human relationship that every society must cultivate for its perpetuation. . . .
Second, individuals and organizations holding to the historic and natural understanding of marriage as a conjugal union—the covenantal partnership of one man and one woman—will be vilified, legally targeted, and denied constitutional rights in order to pressure them to conform to the new orthodoxy.
Third, the new jurisprudence of dignity is unlimited in principle and will encourage additional claims to redefine marriage and other long-established institutions.
Fourth, the right of all Americans to engage in democratic deliberation, and ultimately self-government, will be decisively undermined.
Any decision that brings about such evils would be questionable. One lacking anything remotely resembling a warrant in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution must be judged anti-constitutional and illegitimate. Obergefell should be declared to be such, and treated as such, by the other branches of government and by citizens of the United States. . . .
Therefore . . . We emphasize that the course of action we are here advocating is neither extreme nor disrespectful of the rule of law. Lincoln regarded the claim of supremacy for the Supreme Court in matters of constitutional interpretation as incompatible with the republican principles of the Constitution. Our position is summed up in Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address:
I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.[Signatories include affiliations with these institutions: Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Boston College Law School, Louisiana State University Law Center, Thomas Goode Jones School of Law at Faulkner University, Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University, University of St. Thomas School of Law, Regent University School of Law, Princeton University, Texas Tech University, Michigan State University, Azusa Pacific University, Kansas State University, University of Notre Dame, University of Texas, University of Nebraska, Central Connecticut State University, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Villanova University, Claremont Graduate University, Vanderbilt University, Pepperdine University, University of Dallas, Northern Illinois University, Boston University, California State University]
To read the entire statement above, CLICK HERE.
Also read Religious Liberty is in the Homosexualists' Crosshairs
And read President Obama Invokes God: Gay Agenda Trumps Freedom of Religion
