Free Republic

Most Americans believe that the federal government stands absolutely supreme. Nobody can question its dictates. Nobody can refuse its edicts. Nobody can resist its commands. This is simply not true. Laws passed in pursuance of the Constitution do stand as the supreme law of the land. But that doesn’t in any way imply the federal government lords over everything and everybody in America.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe jokingly said he would travel to the White House and propose to U.S. President Barack Obama, who lauded a historic Supreme Court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 American states last week. The Zimbabwean leader mocked the 5-4 court decision and condemned marriage equality during his weekly radio interview with the country’s national radio station, ZBC, on Saturday, according to media reports. “I’ve just concluded since President Obama endorses the same-sex marriage, advocates homosexual people and enjoys an attractive countenance – thus if it becomes necessary, I shall travel to Washington, D.C., get...

It wasn’t like we didn’t see this coming but it’s certainly arriving faster and harder than even some of the more conservative estimates would have predicted. Now that gay marriage (or just any old marriage if you prefer) is a “constitutionally assured right” in the United States, Left side proponents are taking their victory laps. But at the same time they’re going to stick to the established talking points of telling everyone not to worry… nothing bad is going to happen to anyone else. You’re just not adjusted to the New and Improved Post-Homophobic Christianity. (From the Daily Beast) The...

Obama has built a legacy, all right: appeasement, staggering debt, racial animosity . . . President Obama last week spiked the ball on the Supreme Court’s decisions to legalize gay marriage and to ratify the Affordable Care Act. Yet it is difficult to see quite how Obama had much to do with these decisions — or, to the degree he did, that they are earth-shattering. He twice ran for president expressing opposition to gay marriage while emphasizing the religious element of holy matrimony, which, he argued, precluded same-sex marriages. Is he delighted that the Court ignored his prior views? On...

I started the day on Bill Bennett's radio show, which is always fun. Jonah Goldberg was on before me, and advanced the proposition, after the Supreme Court's almighty constitutional bender last week, that it wasn't so bad; conservatives who just pottered around in their own world and tended to their families would still be able to lead lives largely unbattered by the forces of "progress". A few minutes later, one of Bill's listeners, Claudine, came on and said that's what Germans reckoned in the 1930s: just keep your head down and the storm will pass. How'd that work out? Claudine...

Jeb Bush said he believed that the Supreme Court should have allowed the states to make a decision on marriage, adding that it is “crucial that as a country we protect religious freedom and the right of conscience and also not discriminate.” “Guided by my faith, I believe in traditional marriage. I believe the Supreme Court should have allowed the states to make this decision. I also believe that we should love our neighbor and respect others, including those making lifetime commitments. In a country as diverse as ours, good people who have opposing views should be able to live...

The Sword and the KeysKey to resolving the issues regarding how the church must relate to the state is an understanding of the distinct functions Scripture assigns to each authority. Church and state are actually both ministers of God that are appointed to fulfill certain tasks. Historically, human beings have always run into trouble when the state attempts to do the work of the church and the church attempts to do the work of the state.

By now, you have heard the Supreme Court issued its long-anticipated decision that imposed a 50-state same-sex marriage mandate. Pastors and churches have exhibited a great degree of uncertainty preceding this moment, wondering what the effect will be on their ministry. Now that the decision has been released, though, we can respond with greater clarity. Here are the immediate things you need to know.

If you attended church, synagouge, temple, mosque etc. did your pastor say anything about recent USSC rulings?

Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday wrote a fiery dissent in response to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

From Scalia's dissent on court conducting a putsch to overthrow the country: "22 If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie....

I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy. The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize as marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangements it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance. 2 OBERGEFELL v. HODGES SCALIA, J., dissenting Those civil consequences—and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences—can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me...

This week, we have twice seen Supreme Court justices violating their judicial oaths. Yesterday, the justices rewrote Obamacare, yet again, in order to force this failed law on the American people. Today, the Court doubled down with a 5–4 opinion that undermines not just the definition of marriage, but the very foundations of our representative form of government. Both decisions were judicial activism, plain and simple. Both were lawless.As Justice Scalia put it regarding Obamacare, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ . . . We should...

As the mainstream media takes a boisterous victory lap over the Supreme Court’s declaration of nationwide same-sex marriage, the Washington Post took the extra step of invoking the divine. Wonkblog’s Ana Swanson wrote: Senior White House official Betsey Stevenson, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, captured what looked like a sign from the heavens on Friday at 11 a.m. Stevenson snapped a photo of a rainbow that had appeared over the White House.

Continuing his critique of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, Sen. Ted Cruz said Friday that the rulings mark “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nations history.” Cruz made the comments in an interview on Sean Hannity’s radio show Friday afternoon. “Today is some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history,” Cruz said. “I couldn’t say it more eloquently,” Hannity responded. “Yesterday and today were both naked and shameless judicial activism,” Cruz said. “Neither decision — the decision yesterday rewriting Obamacare for the second time. Six justices joined the Obama administration. You...