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Justice Kennedy: Christians with convictions resigned under Hitler and they should today too
LifeSiteNews ^ | 10/29/15 | Father Mark Hodges

Posted on 10/29/2015 10:34:54 AM PDT by wagglebee

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, October 29, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told a Harvard Law School audience that government employees with religious convictions about marriage should resign.

The Ronald Reagan appointee said on Wednesday that if a public official has a moral objection to homosexuality, he must either follow the law or quit public service.

The judge's comment came in answer to a question a student asked about government officials who disagree with the Supreme Court's decisions on gay marriage, or abortion, and if those citizens have the constitutional right to act according to their sincerely held moral beliefs.

Kennedy replied that no, they do not have the right to refuse to comply with the law. 

Curiously, Kennedy cited as buttressing his point the fact that few judges resigned under the Third Reich. "How many judges, do you think, resigned in the Third Reich?" Kennedy asked, to the response of silence in the great hall. He answered his own question by raising three fingers.

At one point, his words made quitting sound noble: "Great respect, it seems to me, has to be given to people who resign rather than do something they view as morally wrong, in order to make a point."

The justice admitted that Christians who must "enforce a law that they believe is morally corrupt" face "difficult moral questions." "However," he said, "the rule of law is that, as a public official, in performing your legal duties, you are bound to enforce the law."

Responses from Christian leaders noted the irony of saying that for public employees, the moral thing to do is follow immorality. Kennedy made no mention of religious convictions as actual, universal truths.

Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver commented to LifeSiteNews, "Unjust laws should be resisted." "The history of the United States includes non-compliance, even by presidents, to immoral laws."

Staver told LifeSiteNews, "Religious freedom and conscience should be protected."  In fact, Staver said, morality requires the reverse of what Kennedy advocated. "Justices or judges who disregard the Constitution and impose their own will should resign."

Gay activists were quick to applaud. The online journal The New Civil Rights Movement reported that Justice Kennedy "left no wiggle room for the 'religious accommodation' the renegade Kentucky clerks are demanding for themselves."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: anthonykennedy; cambridge; christians; culturewars; cwii; fascism; gaykkk; homosexualagenda; libertarians; massachusetts; matstaver; medicalmarijuana; moralabsolutes; nazism; samesexmarriage; scotus; totalitarianism; usconstitution
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To: wagglebee

So is he saying that we are living under a fascist ruler? I would say so.


61 posted on 10/29/2015 10:57:30 AM PDT by huldah1776
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To: Michael.SF.
He should recuse himself from all religious cases in the future, better yet, her should be impeached (after the election).
Yeah - but there are four others on SCOTUS who are worse.
Easy to get fixated on Kennedy, when he is good on some important things - and the Democrat nominees rarely get anything right.

62 posted on 10/29/2015 10:59:12 AM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: wagglebee

Interesting that Kennedy hasn’t resigned.

The problem with the “Christians with convictions should resign” notion is it plays into the plans of their sociopolitical opponents.

Consider Kennedy’s statement a warning, to wit: “get out now, before we drive you out with escalating force.”


63 posted on 10/29/2015 11:01:48 AM PDT by ctdonath2 (Everyone entering NRA offices come out alive. Not so Planned Parenthood.)
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To: theoilpainter

Yes, exactly.

The point here isn’t about Government officials doing or not doing their jobs. It’s about what reasonable accomidations need to be made for individual government employees required to engage in acts they believe to be immoral.

Kennedy seems to be straight out chucking the concept that reasonable accomidations based on faith and morality can exist for government employees.

THAT is scary as all hell coming from a SCOTUS Justice. Especially since that Justice is the asknowleged “moderate” on the Court.


64 posted on 10/29/2015 11:02:03 AM PDT by tanknetter
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To: KC_Lion

Kennedy is one of the primary reasons for the development of Existential Cage Theory. He, more than most liberals, belongs in one.

He should be put on display in a public square like a zoo animal as an examole to others, and in a nod to the primal wisdom of our monkey brethren, have feces flung at him.


65 posted on 10/29/2015 11:02:10 AM PDT by Norm Lenhart (Embrace "Existential Cage Theory")
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To: wagglebee
if a public official has a moral objection to homosexuality, he must either follow the law or quit public service.

Mr. Justice Kennedy is a public official.

I don't see him resigning. Do you?

Fascinating ...

66 posted on 10/29/2015 11:02:14 AM PDT by NorthMountain ("The time has come", the Walrus said, "to talk of many things")
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To: Cicero
I think you're a little confused.

This is Kennedy talking, his children are grown.

Roberts dissented in Obergefell.

67 posted on 10/29/2015 11:02:54 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee

He’s so stupid, he insulted himself.


68 posted on 10/29/2015 11:03:40 AM PDT by miss marmelstein (Richard the Third: I'd like to drive away not only the Turks (moslims) but all my foes.")
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To: Vigilanteman

It’s OUR government, Mr. Justice.
Why don’t you get out ?


69 posted on 10/29/2015 11:03:52 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (Baseball players, gangsters and musicians are remembered. But journalists are forgotten.)
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To: AU72

Being a Christian in the US today is similar to being a Jew in 1933 Germany. Looks like Kennedy kind of agrees.


70 posted on 10/29/2015 11:04:07 AM PDT by cuban leaf (The US will not survive the obama presidency. The world may not either.)
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To: wagglebee

Or.. tell Hitler no and keep a pistol around in case he gets any funny ideas.


71 posted on 10/29/2015 11:05:35 AM PDT by DesertRhino ("I want those feeble minded asses overthrown,,,")
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To: cuban leaf

It’s not a good analogy.

The Jews in 1933 were a tiny minority. Christians today? Not so much.

By the numbers, if Christians wanted to rise up and change things through the ballot box, they could. Easily. If they wanted to rise up and change things through mass boycotts, they could. Easily.

In 1933 Germany didn’t have those options.


72 posted on 10/29/2015 11:08:42 AM PDT by tanknetter
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To: wagglebee

A more appropriate analogy would have been, “If you take the Queen’s shilling, you must do the Queen’s bid.”


73 posted on 10/29/2015 11:09:55 AM PDT by DJ Taylor (Once again our country is at war, and once again the Democrats have sided with our enemy.)
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To: wagglebee

Did I miss something, or did “Justice” Kennedy just compare our current government to the Third Reich?


74 posted on 10/29/2015 11:10:20 AM PDT by WayneS (Yeah, it's probably sarcasm...)
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To: sport

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”


75 posted on 10/29/2015 11:11:48 AM PDT by Psalm 144 (The mill grinds exceedingly fine.)
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To: Genoa

>>Very interesting that a totalitarian society in 20th-century Germany is what occurs to Kennedy as an example of the situation here today.

Any thinking person can see the many similarities.


76 posted on 10/29/2015 11:12:30 AM PDT by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: wagglebee

No-—ALL unjust law is “null and void”. Justice is the Queen of Virtue and ALL JUST LAWS have to promote ‘public virtue”-—not Marxism (theft/welfare/destruction of biological connections).

That was stated by Justice John Marshall (father of American Jurisprudence), MLK, Jr., and the Nuremberg Trials-—they ALSO ADDED that it is the DUTY of EVERYONE to disobey UNJUST LAWS (any laws that promote irrational, vile, unnatural use of the human body—or slavery—or baby killing).

We need to put this so-called “Justice” in prison for Treason and throwing out Rule of Law (Higher Laws/God’s) for Stalin’s satanic constitution.


77 posted on 10/29/2015 11:12:48 AM PDT by savagesusie (Right Reason According to Nature = Just Law)
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To: wagglebee

Kennedy has turned out to be as insane as most of the rest of the lefty libturds on the court


78 posted on 10/29/2015 11:13:26 AM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: WayneS

Yes, Kennedy just compared our current government to the Third Reich. Who does he think he is? Julius Streicher or Josef Goebbels?


79 posted on 10/29/2015 11:14:05 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: wagglebee
The Declaration of Independence says nothing about "resigning". It does, however, say the following:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...

80 posted on 10/29/2015 11:14:22 AM PDT by WayneS (Yeah, it's probably sarcasm...)
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