“One of the books in my fairly small library is written by the late Robert Bork, a former federal judge, lawyer and conservative scholar with a brilliant mind whose nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 was de-railed by the liberal left in his confirmation hearings. Having read many of his writings, I can see that if he had been appointed to the highest court, that we would have today one of the most outstanding constitutional minds ever to be on the Supreme Court. In his book called Slouching Towards Gomorrah, he offers us a view of a culture in decline; a nation whose very foundation is crumbling due to the serious moral crisis that it is going through. The will to resist the path that liberalism and egalitarianism is taking us is our only hope, according to an afterword he wrote in his last edition. How prophetic was he?
On Friday, June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, wrote more law, instead of performing their constitutional duty of interpreting the law and leaving such matters to the states. Never mind that they also ignored God’s natural law and decided to become the supreme arbiters of what is moral. Today, another step towards the eventual and complete moral destruction of the nation was taken. It also is a further step closer to God’s judgment on this country. The decision declares that homosexuals are free to “marry” in any of the 50 states, including the 14 which now forbid homosexual marriage. This result was not surprising. I am certain Robert Bork would never have voted yes for this ruling.
Also not surprising was a statement by the professing Christian president of the United States, Barack Obama, who said in an eight minute speech that this decision “will strengthen all our communities” and “is a victory for America.” This is the same Obama whose belief (while running for office) was that he believed that marriage was strictly between a man and a woman. This man who professes to be a Christian, has now once again rejected God’s law in favor of man’s law. But we have more to be concerned about than just one man’s unbiblical thinking, although he has tremendous influence whenever he speaks.
This is the path to Sodom and Gomorrah American-style. I had some thoughts about this decision when I first heard it. I asked myself, what will this lead to? Many share the same thoughts that I do, that this will lead not only to further moral decline, but also to increasing persecution of Christians, simply for speaking the truth or for trying to live their lives by their Christian conscience. We are already targets of the radicals and liberals who want to force not only acceptance, but they also seek complete and blanket approval, and even celebration, of their perverted and sinful behavior. We will now become even bigger targets, perhaps even at the risk of losing our jobs or businesses, because it does not stop with this. The “right” to marry will not be enough for the “tolerant ones.”
Not only that, but we will see further collapse of the Christian evangelical churches as they cross the line from biblical truth, to compromise and affirmation of homosexual “Christians.” It will come. This will be even worse than persecution from the outside. For a more complete treatise on some of the things that will most likely happen, see David Cloud’s article (What Rights Will Others Lose When Homosexuals Gain Their Rights?).
Mr. Obama also said today that “shifts in hearts and minds is possible.” That’s the problem, you see, in the Christian church. Many Christians are wrongly shifting their hearts and minds towards a rejection of God’s law, sometimes just because their child or grandchild has declared to be homosexual! We cannot shift away from the unchanging word of God! Yet, out of sympathy perhaps for the homosexual and their “loving and committed relationships”, many Christians have become “gay-affirming”, and have lost the desire to plainly show a sinner that sin, no matter what kind, will lead a person to hell.
Finally, it has been a long time since I gave any kind of positive comment regarding the Nazarene Board of General Superintendents. If they are reading this, then I say thank you for quickly making a statement that is unambiguous and biblically solid. It will draw severe criticism from the radicals who want full acceptance and approval by the church, but it had to be said. Their statement can be read here. That being said, they still have much to do to stop the influx of emergent ideology and other false teachings in the church, including the infiltration of the homosexual agenda in our own churches and colleges.
So I posed my question on both the Concerned Nazarenes Facebook page, and Concerned Christians as well. Below are responses from several Christians (Names withheld because the group is a closed group). Hopefully these thoughts will make some of us ponder what is to come down the road. May God help us to stand firm in our faith, to not compromise in any way what He has clearly taught in Scripture.
Question: What will this Lead To Now?
“One by one, the moral lines in our nation have been crossed, or will soon be crossed. The relativism and lack of moral accountability espoused, taught by our educational institutions, and increasingly embraced by the current generation means that there is no basis for truth or retaining moral boundaries. What’s worse is the tolerance demanded by godless society, is increasingly not extended or granted to those who follow Christ. Christians are the only ones who it is acceptable to harass, marginalize, and discriminate against. It will be increasingly so. The persecution of Christians is just beginning and we know it will get worse. We should not be surprised, as the Bible talks of the last days as being increasingly wicked, and “as in the days of Noah”. Yet, we are not to fear! Hold fast to God’s Word in your hearts, “Do not fear for I am with you, do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Be bold and courageous for the Lord while he gives you breath, and fear no man. Our future is in Heaven!”
“Those who oppose will be labeled as hate-mongers and bigots. They will be let go from jobs, churches will be forced to recognize same-sex marriages or they will lose their 501C-3. Pastors who preach the Bible will be charged with hate speech and will serve prison time.”
“This is definitely not the end, it is only the beginning of something even more evil. This is a great gateway for demons to be unleashed on the US, but I believe it is also a poke in the eye of conservative religiosity in order to stir them into a revolt so that the government can justify committing troops against it’s citizens.”
“It’s a sad day. We call good evil and evil good.”
“Instead of closet sins, they will be open in front of everyone. It would be illogical to assume that it hasn’t been going on. So now it will become something very public and in your face. The biggest issue to me is the freedom of speech.”
“The issue for “gay Marriage” has never been a right to sharing as partners, i.e medical insurance. They already had that right. The issue was to push their agenda to pervert marriage so that it no longer holds a sacred vow. A while back I read a book called “The Criminalization of Christianity.” This has been the homosexual agenda since the 1980’s. They have been setting people in places of importance to their cause and slowly infiltrating into the mainstream the idea that being gay is not a sin and is actually just another lifestyle. I do not see “gay marriages” lasting and as a matter of fact in the places where it was already legalized they are already seeing them in divorce courts. My heartache is for the innocent children that will be brought into this perverted life style. At this point, I believe that there is no turning back. The judgment of God is coming soon.”
I am wondering how this will affect the church. Will pastors be given the ultimatum to perform gay wedding ceremonies or have the doors to their churches shut?
I thought to myself-well, they could just make a rule that they will only do weddings for members, but technically, someone could come in single, join the church, then later ask the pastor to marry them to their gay partner. I am sure someone would do it just to spite the churches. It’s a scary day for sure. I also don’t think God is going to let this go unpunished.
I thought to myself-well, they could just make a rule that they will only do weddings for members, but technically, someone could come in single, join the church, then later ask the pastor to marry them to their gay partner. I am sure someone would do it just to spite the churches. It’s a scary day for sure. I also don’t think God is going to let this go unpunished.
There will definitely be a day of accountability – or God’s Word isn’t true (and we know it is!). We’re in for some rough days ahead. I HOPE and PRAY that sinners recognize the reasons for judgment. We, as Christians, will have to trust God to help and protect us, according to His will.
Today is a temporary victory for those who follow after their own belly, and stand in judgment over God. Psalm 2 …..comes to mind:
Why do the nations conspire
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
The humanists are celebrating their perceived victory over God’s Word..
Trim your lamps.”
Trim your lamps.”
Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
So…God has told us in His word what is good concerning sodomy and what is evil concerning sodomy, and the United States of America has told God, once again, that He means nothing to us and we will not listen to His word. We have told Him we do not want Him in our schools. We have told Him we do not want Him in our wombs. 57 million dead babies will testify in heaven as to what a terrible decision that was. We have now told Him that we do not want Him in our marriages. We have dared Him to do something about it. We have, once again, decided to spit in His face. This time, though, we have done it by siding with a community (the sodomites) whose only goal in history has been to openly rebel against God with filthy and prideful displays of their sexual perversions (please see any PRIDE parade), and dominate and abuse any weaker people (see Genesis 19 and Judges 19 and ask any Christian cake bakers/photographers in our day and age). Please realize that as a Bible believing Christian, now that the US has approved this abomination, if you stand on the word of God and declare this as the wicked sin it is, you WILL be persecuted. They will come after the churches as well, pushing for full acceptance of their lifestyle by all of them, and I encourage you to get out of any church that compromises on this issue. Watch the public school systems as well. There will be a tremendous push for the children to be exposed to it more and more. It’s already happening.
The United States is gone. Welcome to the United Sodom of Gomorrica.”
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U.S. Supreme Court Rules:
Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Must Be Legalized
in All 50 States
BY HEATHER CLARK
SEE: http://christiannews.net/2015/06/26/u-s-supreme-court-rules-same-sex-marriage-must-be-legalized-in-all-50-states/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court issued its monumental ruling on same-sex “marriage” on Friday, declaring that all 50 states must and are “required ” to legalize “gay marriage” under the U.S. Constitution.
“The court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the 5-4 decision, with the majority being the liberal justices on the bench: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Steven Breyer and the aforementioned Justice Kennedy.
While the court recognized the longstanding definition of marriage as being “a union between two persons of the opposite sex,” the five justices opined that “the history of marriage is one of both continuity and change.”
“That institution—even as confined to opposite-sex relations—has evolved over time,” Kennedy said.
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family,” the court concluded. “In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death.”
“It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves,” it said. “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, with each writing their own opinions. Justice Scalia sharply denounced the ruling.
“Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall,” he declared. “With each decision of ours that takes from the people a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly not based on law, but on the ‘reasoned judgment’ of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer of our impotence.”
Justice Roberts likewise opposed the majority conclusion, advising the American people: “[D]o not celebrate the Constitution” as supporting the decision.
“It had nothing to do with it,” he said.
The ruling now means that the remaining 14 states who have banned same-sex “marriage” in their Constitutions are required to recognize and allow the nuptials.
Homosexual advocates cheered outside of the court as the decision was distributed, but Christian organizations are already denouncing the ruling as an affront to the American people and the Most Supreme of all courts.
“The Supreme Court has stripped all Americans of our freedom to debate and decide marriage policy through the democratic process,” said Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Legal Counsel Jim Campbell.
“The freedom to democratically address the most pressing social issues of the day is the heart of liberty. The court took that freedom from the people and overrode the considered judgment of tens of millions of Americans who recently reaffirmed marriage as the union of a man and a woman,” he continued. “The court cast aside the understanding of marriage’s nature and purpose that diverse cultures and faiths across the globe have embraced for millennia.”
As previously reported, the ruling centered on the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, as well as several other cases that were on appeal after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that states had a right to decline to recognize arrangements outside of the male-female marital union. Today’s ruling overturns the Sixth Circuit decision, declaring that states do not have the autonomous right to protect the definition of marriage within their borders.
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Justice Scalia Issues Scathing Dissent
in Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Ruling:
‘Pride Goeth Before a Fall’
BY HEATHER CLARK
SEE: http://christiannews.net/2015/06/26/justice-scalia-issues-scathing-dissent-in-same-sex-marriage-ruling-pride-goeth-before-a-fall/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
WASHINGTON — As one of the four justices that dissented from today’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring that all 50 states must legalize same-sex “marriage,” Justice Antonin Scalia issued a sharp rebuke of his colleagues’ arrogance, warning that “pride goeth before a fall.”
“The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,” he wrote. “It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the court to do so.”
Scalia was speaking of his disapproval of five black-robed justices issuing an edict that he opined was “highly unrepresentative” of the nation and “hardly a cross-section of America.”
“Today’s decree says that my ruler, and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” he said. “And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”
“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the people of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves,” he said.
Scalia then began to speak with sarcasm, stating that he believed the justices’ ruling reeked of arrogance.
“[W]hat really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial putsch,” he said. “The five justices who compose today’s majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every state violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003.”
“They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since,” Scalia continued. “These justices know that limiting marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry.”
“And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution,” he said.
Scalia remarked that the court’s reasoning, which he likewise criticized, was couched in personal preference and not based upon law.
“[The majority’s opinion] stands for nothing whatever, except those freedoms and entitlements that this court really likes. And the Equal Protection Clause, as employed today, identifies nothing except a difference in treatment that this court really dislikes,” he wrote. “The world does not expect logic and precision in poetry or inspirational pop philosophy; it demands them in the law. The stuff contained in today’s opinion has to diminish this court’s reputation for clear thinking and sober analysis.”
The Roman Catholic justice opined that the court should have left the matter up to the states, rather than using its power to force the nation into bowing to the will of five men and women, thus confiscating power from the people.
“Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall,” he wrote. “With each decision of ours that takes from the people a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the ‘reasoned judgment’ of a bare majority of this court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.”
In addition to Scalia, Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito all issued dissenting opinions on Friday, with each one building on each’s other criticism of the majority.
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Supreme Court Rubber Stamps Same-sex “Marriage” — Time for Nullification
BY SELWYN DUKE
SEE: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/21145-supreme-court-rubber-stamps-same-sex-marriage-time-for-nullification; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Has our nation traded the rule of law for the rule of lawyers? Critics would say so. And this week’s Supreme Court rulings — most notably Friday’s 5-4 decision on faux marriage — could be their Exhibit A.
Friday’s ruling, stating that same-sex couples have a “right” to “marry” in all 50 states, went down precisely as critics had predicted — and feared. Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with the Court’s four most liberal judges — Elena Kagan, Sonya Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer — in the promotion of faux marriage; he also wrote the majority opinion. Justices Antonin Scalia, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito were on the opposing side, with each writing his own dissent.
Scalia was scathing in his denunciation of the majority opinion, calling the Court a “threat to American democracy,” characterizing its opinion as “lacking even a thin veneer of law,” and writing that it “is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.” Chief Justice Roberts, known for his own activist lawyercraft in the Court’s infamous ObamaCare decisions, wrote that the “court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us.” Roberts perhaps felt particularly strongly about today’s decision as he read a summary of his dissent from the bench, the first time he has done so during his almost decade-long tenure. And putting matters in no uncertain terms, he said to faux marriage advocates, “By all means celebrate today’s decision…. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
What the decision did have to do with, as per Roberts’ allusion, were the five majority justices’ feelings on what is “good” for society. While marriage is clearly a state matter, Justice Kennedy dismissed this reality with an appeal to emotion, saying that the “cautious” approach was insufficient because, for same-sex couples “and their children the childhood years will pass all too soon.” Of course, many argue that being raised by a homosexual couple isn’t good for children, but, as a constitutional matter, this is as irrelevant as Kennedy’s judgment. The Constitution has no Good for Children Clause; such determinations are to be made by the people and expressed through their state representatives.
In the majority decision, which cites the Constitution’s due process clause, Kennedy continued with the emotional arguments. He wrote of same-sex couples, “Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” This actually gets at the consistently missed central point of the matter: What is this “oldest institution”? As I wrote in an April piece titled “Supreme Fallacy: Courts Have No Business Even Considering Marriage”:
What if someone told you that homosexuals already have the right to marry — meaning, they have a right enter into a conjugal union with a member of the opposite sex — as that’s what marriage is? Of course, faux-marriage advocates will protest and dispute this definition. This brings us to the universally ignored crux of the matter:
The marriage debate is not about rights.
It is about definitions.
After all, how can you decide if there’s a right to a thing unless you first determine what that thing is?
Are the courts supposed to say “There is a right to we know not what”?
The marriage debate cannot be about rights because no one — anywhere — disputes that all adult Americans have a right to “marry.” Some disagree, apparently, on what “marriage” is.
Yet if the courts aren’t going to use the definition operative in Western civilization (and beyond) for millennia, what are they supposed to do? Are a handful of judges qualified to redefine marriage?
Ironically, neither liberals nor conservatives help in this regard. Liberals might reject the time-tested marriage definition, but they never take pains to put forth their own hard, fast, unabashedly and consistently stated definition. One reason for this is interesting. Since definitions limit and exclude, to do so would render them guilty of precisely what they accuse traditionalists of: being exclusionary and discriminatory. They would lose their illusory high ground and a handy cudgel with which they hammer their opponents. So they want to have it both ways.
They want to claim, at least tacitly, that the right marriage definition is wrong while also refusing to tell anyone what definition is right.
But if they don’t know what definition is right, how can they be so sure the traditional one is wrong?
And how are conservatives culpable? Not only do they consistently fail to make the above points, but they actually accuse the Left of trying to “redefine” marriage. This gives them far too much credit because, again, they’ve made no real attempt at redefining marriage.
They are in the process of “undefining” it.
They do this by essentially saying that “marriage equality” means being allowed your own conception of marriage. And it’s again an example of wanting it both ways:
Leftists wish to undermine marriage’s correct definition, refuse to establish an alternative one, but then claim their actions won’t lead to the government recognition of polygamy and other conceptions of “marriage.”
This is why an “undefinition” is unacceptable. As I wrote last year, addressing the idea that faux marriage must be recognized by the government based on a 14th Amendment equal-protection argument:
Asking if there is a right to an undefined thing is like asking if you want to play an undefined game, eat an undefined substance, or marry an undefined entity.
But what if “gay marriage” actually existed as a separate and legitimate species of marriage? What if it had its own special definition because it was its own particular thing? Even if that got you around the definitional problem, it isn’t a legally sound argument or one that avoids the slippery slope [to polygamy and beyond]. This is for a simple reason: People have equality under the law.
Institutions don’t.
The mere fact of existence cannot and does not confer legality upon an institution (slavery is a good example). To imply otherwise is to tacitly set a precedent whereby any conception of “marriage” under the sun would have to have its “equality” under the law. And note here that polygamy has infinitely more of a historical claim to institution status than does faux marriage.
Interestingly, Kennedy beats around the bush of the definitional problem — inadvertently, apparently, and oblivious to it — seamlessly transitioning between one definition and another without ever directly addressing the question of what marriage “is.” He also wrote:
From their beginning to their most recent page, the annals of human history reveal the transcendent importance of marriage. The lifelong union of a man and a woman always has promised nobility and dignity to all persons, without regard to their station in life. Marriage is sacred to those who live by their religions and offers unique fulfillment to those who find meaning in the secular realm. Its dynamic allows two people to find a life that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two persons.
Kennedy states that the “lifelong union of a man and a woman always has promised nobility and dignity to all persons,” but concludes a mere two sentences later speaking of the more nebulous “two people.” How does he manage this transition? Does the operative definition of marriage involve a male-female union or just any “two persons”? And how does the promise inherent in an opposite-sex union relate to the supposed promise of a same-sex union? Kennedy doesn’t say. In what could be called instinctive juridical sleight-of-hand, he slips the whole matter by all and sundry — most notably himself.
This is just one of the majority opinion’s “showy profundities” that are “profoundly incoherent,” as Scalia put it. But however profound the reasoning used against those given to incoherent profundities, they cut no ice because, as Ben Franklin observed, “You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into.” So what are we left to do with a Court to which, as Scalia said after Thursday’s ObamaCare ruling, “Words don’t mean anything”?
Reporting on Friday’s Court decision, the Associated Press wrote, “The court’s 5-4 ruling means the remaining 14 states [that refused to recognize faux marriage], in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage.”
Actually, no, it doesn’t.
There are other options.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1819 that if a certain practice ever became status quo, our Constitution will have become a felo de se — a suicide pact. That practice is judicial review, the idea that the courts have the final say on law’s meaning and that their determinations must constrain all three branches of government.
And judicial review has become status quo.
Does this mean we must commit suicide?
Jefferson explained the problem with judicial review, writing, “For intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this [judicial review] opinion, to one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of the nation…. The constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and shape into any form they please.”
Jefferson also pointed out, correctly, that “Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.” Have we not seen this truth on full display the past week, with the Court repeatedly proving itself to be merely a rubber stamp for a radical leftist agenda? Summing up the profound danger of judicial review in 1820, Jefferson minced no words in calling it “a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” That oligarchy reigns.
It’s instructive to note here the origin of judicial review. No, it’s not in the Constitution. Nor was it passed by Congress, signed by a president, or voted on by the people. Rather, it was declared to be a power the Court should have in the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision. That’s right:
The Supreme Court gave the Supreme Court ultimate-arbiter power.
The Supreme Court made the Supreme Court into a de facto oligarchy.
But must a nation meant to be of, by, and for the people watch the rule of law wither under the rule of lawyers? It must be remembered here that the Court has no enforcement power; it has no army, no gendarmes who can shackle the non-compliant. It enjoys its extra-constitutional power at the pleasure of the other two branches of government. And while judicial review isn’t in the Constitution, the remedy for such usurpation is. Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution states:
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make. [Emphasis added.]
In other words, Congress has the power to remove issues — such as marriage — from the Court’s jurisdiction. And, in fact, a bill put forth in April by Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa) would do just that. As he wrote at his website, “My bill strips Article III courts of jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction, ‘to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, any type of marriage.’ Second, my bill provides that ‘[n]o federal funds may be used for any litigation in, or enforcement of any order or judgment by, any court created by an Act of Congress.’” Congress has the power to “just say no.” It just has to be willing to act.
But what if it doesn’t? Are Americans then destined to languish under the judicial oligarchy? Thankfully, we have another recourse, one Jefferson called the “rightful remedy”: nullification.
This simply means that states can declare that since a given federal action is unconstitutional, they will not abide by it. This may seem radical to many, but it’s nothing new. What do you think is happening with “sanctuary cities” and their refusal to enforce federal immigration laws or with localities that thumb their noses at federal drug laws?
Nullification is happening.
The New American’s Joe Wolverton, II, J.D. provided more details last year, writing:
States that nullify congressional acts or presidential decrees that violate the Constitution would not only be stopping the federal juggernaut at their state borders, they would also be signaling that the Constitution is so vitally important that it must be enforced.
In the Kentucky Resolution of 1799, Thomas Jefferson called nullification the “rightful remedy” for any and all unconstitutional acts of the federal government.
The federal government may exercise only those powers that were delegated to it. This is made clear by 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.” Simply stated, nullification recognizes each state’s reserved power to nullify, or invalidate, any federal measure that a state deems unconstitutional.
Nullification is founded on the fact that the sovereign states formed the union, and as creators of the contract, they retain ultimate authority to enforce the constitutional limits of the power of the federal government.
It should be noted that when the matter is fashionable resistance to the feds (e.g., to drug or immigration laws), the nullification is neither troubled over nor even called “nullification” — it’s called politically correct. It’s when it actually could preserve tradition and constitutional government that a “federal case” is made of it.
The reality is that that it’s nullification or nothing. Judges do have the same “passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps” as others do, and they will not willingly relinquish the privilege of their excessive power. And constitutional arguments in court won’t help, especially since many jurists actually hold the Constitution in low regard. Justice Ginsburg told Egyptian television in 2012 that she “would not look to the U.S. Constitution” when creating a governing document today because it’s “a rather old constitution.” The irony of an 82-year-old woman impugning the old and extolling the new may not be lost on one, but her view is common. It was echoed by Washington University professor David Law, who the same year, wrote the Daily Signal, “unfavorably compared the Constitution to “Windows 3.1.’” But if jurists will operate by the principle, as Ginsburg also once said, that the Constitution should not be viewed as “stuck in time” (it’s not — it’s stuck where it’s supposed to be: in law), why should we accept that its interpretation is stuck in courts? If justices will view the Constitution as living and not limiting, why should we view lawyercraft as the last word?
If Jefferson is correct, our Constitution long ago became a suicide pact. But it doesn’t have to be. That’s up to us. Just say nullification.
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