Posted on 04/28/2015 6:12:43 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
ANN ARBOR, MI – On Tuesday morning the U. S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the monumental same-sex marriage cases stemming from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld constitutional amendments passed by overwhelming majorities of voters in the states of Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments will focus on two questions: whether bans on gay marriages are constitutional; and, if they are, whether states with bans may refuse to recognize out-of-state gay marriages performed where they are legal. Most Court watchers believe that Justice Kennedy will be the swing vote in a decision that will overturn the state amendments. However, Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Shuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, which upheld the vote of the people to decide sensitive issues, should be of concern to those in favor of gay marriage.
Like most of the states that have passed constitutional amendments upholding traditional marriage before the voters, the amendments under consideration by the Court were passed by overwhelming majorities of voters: fifty-nine percent in Michigan; seventy-four percent in Kentucky; sixty-two percent in Ohio; and eighty percent in Tennessee.
Although the media continues to report that gay marriage is legal in 36 states, they fail to report that in most of those instances single life-time appointed federal judges overruled the vote of the people supporting traditional marriage.
The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national, nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, MI has been on the front lines defending traditional marriage. TMLC filed an amicus brief (friend of the court brief) in tomorrow’s case in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the National Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders (Coalition). This is the seventh brief the Law Center has filed in its fight to preserve traditional marriage and in opposition of marriage redefinition. It also played a significant role in crafting Michigan’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman.
Richard Thompson, the TMLC’s President and Chief Counsel expressed his concerns should the Supreme Court strike down laws passed by the voters. He stated: “Striking down state laws which define traditional marriage will be the worst example of judicial activism since Roe v. Wade. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.’”
Continued Thompson, “Faithful Christians will not abandon their faith regardless of what the Supreme Court decides. We have already witnessed attacks on Christian shop owners and businesses, pastors and private citizens who donate to groups advocating for traditional marriage. Those attacks are intramural compared to the persecution that will unleashed by militant homosexual groups and their lawyers if gay marriage is legalized in all 50 states. So a decision in favor of gay marriage, like Roe v. Wade, will not end the controversy, but will merely change the battleground and specific issues.”
TMLC’s Supreme Court brief is the pinnacle filing in its efforts to stop the judge-led onslaught to redefine marriage by ignoring well-established precedent, and thwarting the will of the overwhelming majority of voters. TMLC’s efforts have involved forming a legal team consisting of TMLC’s senior trial counsel, Erin Mersino, and Co-counsels William R. Wagner and John S. Kane of Lansing, MI.
Click here to read TMLC's entire brief
Erin Mersino stated, “The National Coalition of Black Pastors’ viewpoint is one not often reported in the media. The pastors were able to share with the Law Center first hand experiences, and the brief captures their unique voice.”
Stacy Swimp, a spokesperson for the Coalition stated, “Wherever so-called sexual orientation has falsely become a legal ‘civil right,’ the constitutional rights of Christians to freedom of speech and freedom of religion have been effectively denied by government. God help us.”
Coalition member, Bishop Samuel Smith of the Apostolic World Christian Fellowship consisting of 25,000 churches worldwide representing over 5 million laity stated: “Every once in a while the homosexual agenda makes an effort to redefine morality, but history tells us, that every culture that has embraced the homosexual culture has suffered decadence, depravity, and decline.”
Pastor Danny Holliday, another member of the Black Pastor’s Coalition, stated, “The Supreme Court was wrong on the subject of slavery! Blacks were redefined as property to justify slavery. Gay persons have never been considered nonhuman. In fact, gays could have owned blacks. The immutable issue of being born black is very unlike deciding to become gay or straight.”
Evangelist Janet Boynes, a former lesbian and a member of the Coalition expressed her concerns: “If the Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage the law of the land, this false concept will be taught to our youngest children in the public schools. It will infiltrate the school curriculum in every subject matter. Traditional marriages create healthy societies. Same-sex marriages do not.”
Excerpts from TMLC’s brief: “Comparing the dilemmas of same-sex couples to the centuries of discrimination faced by Black Americans is a deceptive distortion of our country’s culture and history. The disgraces in our nation’s history pertaining to the civil rights of Black Americans are unmatched. No other class of individuals, including individuals who are same-sex attracted, have ever been enslaved, or lawfully viewed not as human, but as property.”
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“The Sixth Circuit properly recognized that “[i]t is not society’s laws or for that matter any one religion’s laws, but nature’s laws (that men and women complement each other biologically), that created the policy imperative.”
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“There is no surer way to destroy an institution like marriage than to destroy its meaning. If ‘marriage’ means whatever a political activist, a cherry-picked plaintiff, or a politically unaccountable appointed judge wants it to mean, it means nothing. If it has no fixed meaning, it is merely a vessel for an unelected judge’s will. It is a subterfuge for judicial legislation. And as Montesquieu observed: ‘There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.’”
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“Finally, we protest Petitioners’ (homosexual marriage proponents] attempt to equate this case to Loving under the banner of ‘marriage equality.’ Petitioners essentially claim that their proposed redefinition improves marriage by adding a necessary element of ‘equality’ to it. This is certainly a clever ploy, for who can oppose equality? But that is all that it is, a ploy. It is not a valid point.”
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“Marriage already has all the equality it can contain without destruction of its meaning, purpose, and proper boundaries. Any legally competent man can marry any legally competent woman, regardless of his or the woman’s race, religion, national origin, or even sexual preference, and vice versa. The problem Petitioners claim this Court must resolve is one that does not exist. True marriage equality already exists.”
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“What Petitioners actually seek is not equality but instead a self-indulgent form of inclusiveness that demands acceptance, and indeed support, of a wide variety of sexual conduct. And once Petitioners’ inclusiveness camel gets its nose in the marriage tent, marriage will not be a better tent; it will be trampled and destroyed.”
“the U. S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments”
Nope. Not going there.
Oral arguments. There is a really bad pun in there....
Oh, darn. I went there anyway.
Prayers up for traditional Marriage.
We knew it would come to this, you can’t have 50 states with 50 different sets of marriage laws.
With the legal system you can draw up power of attorney’s, do trust funds, set up wills that protect your partner’s rights, just as Heterosexuals do.
Don’t shove it down my throat like you did 0’care. It’s against my faith.
Imagine the poor person having to give the 69th oral argument.
To be on the carpet in front of the SCOTUS.
I better go
the jokes write themselves! lol
“Supreme Court to Hear Oral Arguments on Same-Sex Marriage”
Good thing justice is blind so they don’t have to watch.
A decadent culture equates tolerance as the refusal to make rational judgments and the acquiescence to harmful aberrancies.
“Striking down state laws which define traditional marriage will be the worst example of judicial activism since Roe v. Wade. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘that if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.’”
States better be prepared to exercise their God given authority over the Government they loaned a little bit of power, or the ultimate bad decision by the Supreme’s will further reduce what little sovereignty remains. Meanwhile pray diligently for sanity to prevail in the Court’s decision. Another NKP Vet ‘68 ‘69.
Dear Heavenly Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, may the Holy Spirit do a mighty work today in the lawyers and servants arguing to uphold Your will and may You be glorified by working in the hearts and minds of all the supreme court justices especially Kennedy and Roberts too maintain the sanctity of marriage in the United States of America between one man and one woman. Amen
If it turns out that states have to recognize marriages in other states, there should be an immediate push to force states to recognize another state’s concealed carry permit.
The fix has been in since day 1. When this whole issue hit the scene a decade ago I knew the SCOTUS would get around to mandating it nation wide.
Kabuki Theater.
For this topic, I prefer the term “verbal”.
The Liberal line is that Roberts swings on this. Not sure I’d be too surprised if he did.
I was thinking the same
“Hear Oral Arguments on Same-Sex Marriage”
Oral Arguments? That’s a mouth full.
producing of children;
providing for children;
and protection of children.
This is why the institution of marriage has been respected through out history by almost every form of government. Thus by its purpose marriage, in principle, must be between a man and a woman. Sense homosexual couples can not have offspring, there is no reason for them to be married. If gay couples want the benefits of marriage, they may form a legal partnership. There is no need for gay marriage.
Marriage is for:
producing of children;
providing for children;
and protection of children.
Counter argument: lots of married people don’t have, or want, children. I don’t think this will be a convincing argument.
No, I did not imply that a married couple had to have children. I was explaining society’s reason for marriage. For a society to survive there must be children. Marriage between a man and a women has been shown to be the optimal way to insure our survival. In principle, a nonreprodutive couple does not change the main purpose of marriage, that is our survival as a species. Gays do not need to be married. They only want to be married, too make their lifestyle seem more ‘normal’.
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