Replies

Let me add a little more historical perspective. The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and over the ensuring years the Supreme Court used it to apply the Bill of Rights to the states (they did so, Amendment-by-Amendment, actually initially ruling against its application). Religious fanatics like Judge Moore would like you believe that activists judges have mis-applied the 14th Amendment... and this could not be further from the truth! The 14th Amendment was always intended to force the states to abide by the Bill of Rights!!

Here's what Judge Moore and his like-minded simpletons don't want you to know:

Congressman Bingham, one of the authors of the 14th Amendment, spoke the following words on February 26, 1866, as he encouraged his fellow House Members to vote for the Amendment (words that echoed throughout the land and led to its ratification by the states):

“The question is simply whether you will give by this amendment to the people of the United States the power, by legislative enactment, to punish officials of States for violation of oaths enjoined upon them by their Constitution? Is the Bill of Rights to stand in our Constitution hereafter, as in the past five years within eleven States, a mere dead letter? It is absolutely essential to the safety of the people that it should be enforced.

Mr. Speaker, it appears to me that this very provision of the bill of rights brought in question this day, upon this trial before the House, more than any other provision of the Constitution, makes that unity of government which constitutes us one people, by which and through which American nationality came to be, and only by the enforcement of which can American nationality continue to be.

What more could have been added to that instrument to secure the enforcement of these provisions of the bill of rights in every State, other than the additional grant of power which we ask this day?”

The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, with the taste of slavery and Civil War still bitter in American mouths, finally giving all American citizens protection from state actions that violate the Bill of Rights.