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."
One would then think that Lincoln should have resigned in the face of the dred Scott decision. He just doesn’t want people to resist unjust and unlawful Supreme Court decisions.
Resigned from what? in 1857, when the Dred Scott decision was rendered, Lincoln was a lawyer...
It was maintained as “law” throughtout his presidency - an there was that civil war thing. . . .
If Kennedy has ever read Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation based on an employee’s religion, it certainly doesn’t seem to have made the slightest impression on him.
Kennedy is dead wrong. He was one of Ronald Reagan’s biggest mistakes. It’s tragic that we’re stuck with such a loser on SCOTUS.
In 1992 Kennedy was ready to vote with Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas and White to overturn Roe, but changed his mind at the last minute.
Gott im Himmel.
Christians have a right to refuse military service as no Christian should be forced to uphold and defend a Constitution that supports things like abortion and gay marriage or homosexuality.
Now put that in your pipe and smoke it Justice Kennedy.
Great point.
Yes.
And Christians under Hitler would absolutely be morally justified in executing Hitler’s henchmen judges.
Reagan trusted his advisers and rushed this nomination too fast after the Bork “assassination”. Reagan forgot his own advice about trusting/verifying it seems.
Congress needs to enact a Final Solution to the Supreme Court question.
Well, it stopped Hitler cold in his tracks!
You remember. He was so embarrassed by it that he resigned and went to Salzburg to resume his paperhanging career.
This comment by Justice Kennedy is beyond belief.
Perhaps one of our Missouri Synod Lutheran Freepers, Rev. Charles Henrickson, would like to weigh in on what Germans who were true Christians and who opposed the “German Christian” Nazi movement, did to oppose Hitler?
Atheists should resign.
Left wing socialist judges should resign.
Homosexuals on the bench should resign.
odd how kennedy only sees those opposed to his kooky views should resign.
The best known would be Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed for his role in the July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler. Lesser known, but pivotal in exposing the Nazi euthanasia program was Catholic Bishop (later Cardinal) von Galen.
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