Posted on 09/05/2015 11:11:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I always enjoy reading Charlie Cooke, even when he’s disagreeing with me. However, I must dissent from my friend and colleague’s disapproval of Kim Davis’s refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses. If the community — including public officials — meekly acquiesces to the Supreme Court’s lawlessness, then the result will be far more harmful to the rule of law and our constitutional republic than is Davis’s lonely stand.
On a number of occasions, the Supreme Court has used the sword of its unaccountable power to rewrite the Constitution and fundamentally disrupt constitutional processes. Notable examples include, as I’ve pointed out before, Dred Scott and Roe. And then, with the damage done, it has used the shield of the “rule of law” to ensure that its lawless acts are respected and enforced, without exception. The legitimacy of Davis’s protest is inseparable from the illegitimacy of the court opinion that made it necessary. And it is this very illegitimacy that means she should neither resign nor comply. Instead, she has chosen the proper response: resist.
Resignation in response to the Court’s ruling would have represented an unacceptable surrender. Indeed, from the perspective of the ideologues, it would have provided them with a complete victory — with the twin benefit of changing the law and cleansing public service of the devout. Resignations hand over the lever of power to the truly lawless, to those who will engineer social change by any means necessary.
Moreover, compliance in this case would have meant not merely participating in an immoral act but also bowing before an unlawful judicial oligarchy. There are Christians who disagree in good faith, who would say that Biblical commands to obey authority apply. Others, also in good faith, would note that obedience to authority does not mean and cannot mean participation in evil. My own opinion is that the relevant “authority” a public official is to obey is the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The judicial branches’ power to interpret the law does not include the power to rewrite those constitutions.
Let’s be clear. The defiance Davis chose was mild indeed. She did not take up arms. She did not try to escape punishment. She did not even truly deny any single person a marriage license. Any citizen of Rowan County could get in the car and drive a few extra minutes to a neighboring county. I grew up not far from Rowan County, and I’m not sure there’s a single point in the county that’s further than 30 minutes from a neighboring jurisdiction.
#share#Indeed, her defiance was far less consequential than the Left’s flouting of the rule of law throughout the same-sex-marriage fight. NR’s own Nicholas Frankovich outlined multiple examples of mayors or county officials issuing marriage licenses in the face of controlling, democratically enacted state law. Leftist lawlessness included the government of California essentially attempting to fix the outcome to legal challenges to Proposition 8, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman, by refusing to defend the law in court.
When the Obama administration declined to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, it stated that “much of the legal landscape has changed in the 15 years since Congress passed DOMA.” The Constitution, however, had not changed. Only the ideology of the president was different.
The Left’s ongoing defiance of the rule of law and established constitutional order goes well beyond the marriage battle to include sanctuary cities, lawless expansions of the scope of Title IX and Title VII, executive amnesties that are purported to change the legal rights of millions of immigrants, and nuclear agreements drafted in intentional defiance of the constitutional treaty-approval process. The list could go on. Each of these acts is far more consequential to the rights of American citizens than Davis’s refusal to issue marriage licenses. Some of these lawless acts have cost Americans their liberty, others have cost Americans their lives, and the lawlessness of the Iran deal may cost the world another genocide.
Yet while lawless leftists live in the White House and run for president, Davis goes to jail. Davis’s draconian sentence is instructive. A judiciary secure in its reasoning and constitutional authority would see no need to deprive a peaceful woman of her liberty — especially when her resistance doesn’t deprive a single American of his constitutional rights, real or judicially fabricated. Other legal mechanisms exist to hold her accountable, including fines, impeachment, and — of course — the next election. But Davis goes to jail — shortcutting Kentucky’s own enforcement mechanisms — partly to save gay couples a few minutes’ driving time but mainly to defend the dignity of a court system that long ago forfeited any integrity.
Charlie ends his piece by noting, in essence, that resistance is futile, declaring, “You can’t win a revolution by fighting on a single block.” No, but you can start a revolution with a single act. And with her single act of defiance, Davis has given America’s Christian citizens cause to search their own souls. How much more can we abide?
— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.
Justices Roberts and Scalia warned this was coming....
if released she will be forced to wear a cross armband
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!
We the People are the final arbiters over all matters pertaining to government’s just powers! It’s in the Declaration and the Constitution. Look it up.
Resist we must!
Agreed. However, organization and good leaders are necessary.
I’m still wondering... if Kim Davis was a muslim, what the narrative coming from the left and the media would be.
RE: Justices Roberts and Scalia warned this was coming....
The thing is this — Even Justice Kennedy himself assured us in his decision that a case like this would not happen ( despite the cases of the Colorado Baker, the New Mexico Photographer, etc. prior to his decision ).
In his greater wisdom, Kennedy cared not to know this. He thought the gay marriage issue too urgent “to await further legislation, litigation, and debate.” He worried about the “pain and humiliation” gay couples would suffer if denied a right that even President Obama opposed as recently as three years ago ( He obviously was not concerned with the persecution of Christians and what would happen to them ).
So, as to people of faith like Kim Davis concerned about “the ends themselves,” Kennedy told them not to worry.
“The First Amendment,” Kennedy wrote, “ensures that religions, those who adhere to religious doctrines, and others have protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths.”
RESULT:
A federal judge has sent Kim Davis to prison for sticking to the principles Kennedy promised to protect. However, since no relevant legislature has codified any sex marriage laws, no legislature has had the chance to codify any exceptions for people of faith.
So Judge Bunning did what the left and the media expected of him: he improvised by sending Davis to prison.
One would think, though, that if the Fourteenth Amendment safeguards gays from suffering the “pain and humiliation” of being denied marriage, the First Amendment should certainly protect practicing Christians, Muslims, and Jews from the pain and humiliation of being denied their very freedom.
In short, Kennedy and the 4 others made a FOOLISH decision that ensures the destruction of the first amendment rights of tens of millions of devout Christians.
Creating law from the bench. Thus is the sole authority of the congress.
Bravo!
Paging Rev. Franklin Graham ($ 800,000 annual salary) and 100,000 other US Christian Pastors .... to get off their Cowardly Asses and LEAD !!!!!
Thank you for referencing that article SeekAndFind. Please bear in mind that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.
Let’s not overlook that the Founding States gave Congress the power to remove lawless justices from the bench. The problem is that the post-17th Amendment ratification Senate who approved the lawless justices will not work with the House to do so.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt Senators and lawless justices along with it.
I hope the thug marshals that took the Christian woman to prison get the same street justice by the Louis Farrakhan thugs that have been going on nationwide lately.
When government (federal judges) are against the people, then I have NO sympathy for those cops when they get what’s coming to them.
This “judge” Bunning and his kangaroo court decisions is going to create anarchy.
Bad law, like sin, complicates things.
That would be a real kicker. Muslims would rather kill the homosexuals than allow them to marry.
Yet, Davis is in prison for as long as it pleases the blackrobe David Bunning.
This isn't republican government.
What to do? Just keep voting?
So, we now have a religious test for jobs?
They would NEVER make a Muslim issue a sodomite marriage license, not in a million years. They would bend over backwards to accomodate her. Absolutely.
Yes very nicely written.
No...I think we are beyond that....
The only constitutional recourse (and you can forget going back to scotus) is a convention of the states.
There is a lot of resistance to that, much of it from conservatives, but it’s really can’t hurt at this point and might result in some effective amendments, but there is no guarantee of that. There is no guarantee of anything.
I hate this phrase, but I will use it, We have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst, and I decided that was the way to go, back in 2012.
We need to steady our resolve and look this right in the eye and say....”make my day”. Putting everything we hold dear at risk if we want to effect a lasting repair of our governing systems.
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