Posted on 09/03/2015 4:57:23 PM PDT by markomalley
The main contestant on this week’s edition of Internet outrage theater is Kim Davis, a Democratic clerk in Kentucky who is refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Davis, who was arrested by police today for not issuing the licenses, says her religious beliefs prohibit her from rubber-stamping applications for same-sex marriage licenses:
U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning placed Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis in the custody of U.S. marshals until she complies, saying fines were not enough to force her to comply with his previous order to provide the paperwork to all couples and allowing her to defy the order would create a “ripple effect.”
“Her good-faith belief is simply not a viable defense,” Bunning said. “Oaths mean things.”
Davis, who was tearful at times, testified that she could not obey the order because God’s law trumps the court.
“My conscience will not allow it,” she said. “God’s moral law convicts me and conflicts with my duties.”
Davis’s arrest was met with cheers by same-sex marriage advocates who for some reason did not demand imprisonment of officials who lawlessly issued gay marriage licenses in clear contravention of state and federal laws. Take, for example, Democrat Gavin Newsom, who is currently the California lieutenant governor. Back in 2004, when gay marriage was banned under California state law, Newsom openly defied the law and used his power as the mayor of San Francisco to force taxpayer-funded government clerks to issue gay marriage licenses:
Newsom unleashed a political and legal tempest February 12 when he ordered the city clerk to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Nearly 3,200 same-sex couples have gotten licenses in a nine-day frenzy that included thousands of family, friends and soon-to-be betrothed couples ringing City Hall, sometimes for days.
Just like Kim Davis, who is an elected Democrat, Newsom justified his lawlessness by citing his own conscience and beliefs about right and wrong rather than deferring to the actual laws of his state.
If you look for evidence of gay rights advocates chastising Newsom for his blatant lawlessness, you won’t find it. Because it doesn’t exist. You similarly won’t find any evidence of these principled law enforcement purists chastising California state officials for refusing to enforce or defend the Prop 8 ballot initiative in California, which was passed overwhelmingly by California voters.
And don’t you dare look for evidence of high-minded progressives demanding prison sentences for the Washington, D.C. bureaucrats who openly defied federal court orders to issue concealed carry permits in the nation’s capital. Nope. Instead of enforcing the law as handed down in multiple Supreme Court cases, D.C. officials kept manufacturing new reasons to justify their refusal to comply with federal gun laws.
Don’t even get me started on federal laws regarding drug possession. You won’t find progressives calling for the prosecution of scores of Colorado officials in open defiance of federal drug bans, or calling for the heads of federal officials who refuse to enforce federal drug laws in Colorado. No, those federal laws are icky. Sure, they’re indisputably the law of the land. And sure, officials have a duty to equally apply and enforce standing law, but icky laws are different. Only non-icky laws need to be enforced.
Perhaps natural marriage advocates should abandon their religious liberty arguments and instead declare whole cities to be marriage sanctuaries. That strategy has worked splendidly for open borders advocates. Who cares what the federal law requires when it comes to illegal immigration? Those laws restricting citizenship rights to citizens are icky, so they don’t need to be enforced. Sanctuary cities are great, so long as they provide sanctuary from icky laws of which progressives disapprove.
Oh, and those laws regarding the proper handling of classified national security information? Meh. Yeah, those are icky, too. So lay off Hillary Clinton, you dirty law truther. Who cares if she ignored clear law and policy by setting up an unsecured, unsanctioned e-mail server which was then used to house and distribute classified information? Who cares if President Barack Obama himself signed the executive order mandating the protection of national security information, the unauthorized release of which could damage American safety and security? Who cares if she intentionally sent classified information to people outside the government who were never cleared to receive it? Progressives think that law is icky, too, so you’ll have to excuse them from not caring about Hillary’s blatant violation of it (laws regarding the handling of classified information are totally not icky, though, when applied to Republicans like David Petraeus or Scooter Libby).
When you really think about it, though, this whole kerfuffle is obviously the fault of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refuses to issue gay marriage licenses. She shouldn’t known better. She should’ve thought this whole thing through.
If Kim Davis really wanted to avoid the ire and attention of progressives and their media allies, she should’ve just videotaped herself killing babies and then selling their organs. Then she could operate with total impunity.
I'm not calling the Founders the Supreme Soviet, I'm calling the lawless Supreme Court the Supreme Soviet because that is how they act.
Do you actually think that "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States" means the Supreme Court, or that the Supreme Court actually writes laws?
Show me in that Constitution to which you refer just where it gives authority to the Supreme Court to amend the Constitution in violation of Article V, or violate or Amendment 10 of that Constitution, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people, or where it explicitly gives them jurisdiction over marriage, or power to invert the meaning of the word, or to rewrite natural law, or to amend or annul State Constitutions, all of which they apparently think are within their powers.
Had the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment the slightest inkling that it would make inevitable the imposition of “gay marriage,” they would have either scrapped it altogether or written in it a clause safeguarding against such abuse. Had the legislators in both Houses of the U.S. Congress and the legislators of the states had any notion that the Fourteenth Amendment would make same-sex marriage inevitable they would surely have voted against it.
Robert A. J. Gagnon - HOW THE SUPREME COURT ABOLISHED ARTICLE V OF THE CONSTITUTION
“You make me puke.”
Don’t attack me for stating the fact. I’m against same-sex marriage. Do a little research before you attack.
In case you haven't noticed, WE LIVE IN THAT WORLD ALREADY!
See: Occupant of the White House.
“A marriage is between one man and one woman.”
I agree.
“I “spit” on your law.”
Not my law - I don’t agree with it either, and I don’t deserve the attack.
TELL THAT TO OBAMA!
If the sitting President of the United States REFUSES to uphold laws he disagrees with, why should any of us be any different?!
Nice post. This is a very big deal, the Supreme Court really stepped in it this time. There are a lot of people willing to defend this clerk and defy the federal government on this issue. I hope Huckabee rally draws tens of thousand next Tuesday.
You may not like it, neither do I, but it is what it is.
I agree with socalgop….we work to change the law.
Had the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment the slightest inkling that it would make inevitable the imposition of “gay marriage,” they would have either scrapped it altogether or written in it a clause safeguarding against such abuse. Had the legislators in both Houses of the U.S. Congress and the legislators of the states had any notion that the Fourteenth Amendment would make same-sex marriage inevitable they would surely have voted against it.
Robert A. J. Gagnon - HOW THE SUPREME COURT ABOLISHED ARTICLE V OF THE CONSTITUTION
It’s like naming specific children in a will. And then, you have another child. And you forget to update your will. You die with a ten million dollar life insurance payout. Guess who is out of the running!
Lesson learned.
It’s a shame that things have come to this and I hate to sound so jaded, but I really think that going to jail will be the best thing that could possibly have happened to this lady’s political future. She should look around for a Congressional seat.
The SCOTUS’ power of judicial review means they apply the constitution and federal laws to state actors. So, if SCOTUS determines a state law or practice violates the federal constitution, the supremacy clause means that the constitution trumps that law or practice.
Current jurisprudence interpreting the constitution is that treating homosexual couples seeking a marriage license differently than heterosexual couples violates federal constitutional rights. It’s the wrong answer, but that’s what SCOTUS held.
If you don’t like it, the answer isn’t to throw a temper tantrum and stop obeying the law, it’s to get the law changed by winning presidential and senate elections and getting conservatives appointed to the bench.
Of course the framers of the 14th amendment didn’t think it would lead to gay rights. That is the primary reason Obergefell was wrongly decided. But a wrongly-decided supreme court decision is still binding law until you can use the political process to get it changed.
It’s fine to say SCOTUS can’t rewrite “natural law”, but you can’t run a government on principles of natural law which reasonable people are going to disagree with. You give a veto to everyone who disagrees with a decision on moral or natural law grounds, and the country becomes ungovernable within a month, which would sound appealing except i’m not a libertarian.
I'm just talking about her voluntary surrender of her rights, in exchange for limited privileges granted by the State, along with personal indemnification against being sued for doing harm. That's how it works. No matter what she swore to, the State considers it a voluntary, binding contract. From the point of view of the judge, she's invoking rights she gave away and exchanged for privileges HE has the power to limit solely for the interests of the State and not her. And that's what he's doing, based on the previous SCOTUS ruling on this issue.
Everybody wants indemnification, but few realize what they give up to obtain it. Its the pearl of desire, non-responsibility, that the government holds out like the snake held out the apple in the garden.
Maybe not, but this clerk has EVERY discretion to refuse to perform an administrative task based on the Constitution.
What is the ONE question to ask regarding ANY federal act? Answer: IS THE FEDERAL ACT CONSTITUTIONAL?
This act clearly is not constitutional. The constitution gives the feds no authority to meddle in the subject of marriage in general or in state marriage laws in particular.
All this clerk needs is a state that is willing to back her up by nullifying unconstitutional federal acts which by defintion is tyranny.
What’s the Supreme law of the land?
The Constitution AND what?
“The Laws of the United States which shall be made IN PURSUANCE thereof” (The Supremacy Clause: Art VI, Cl 2).
The “Incorporation Doctrine” is not “in pursuance” of the Constitution as written, amended, originally understood, and intended. The heresy of the Incorporation Doctrine has been found to be utterly unconstitutional and a fraud. The 14A was a post-Civil-War reconstruction amendment limited to the intent of establishing ex-slaves to full citizenship - THAT’S IT.
The Constitution gives the feds NO authority to meddle in state marriage laws. The states have the RIGHT and the DUTY to nullify and resist unconstitutional federal acts which by definition are acts of tyranny.
Unconstitutional federal law is INVALID law.
Many “conservatives” say,”You must obey the law” without distinguishing between VALID law and INVALID law and for the feds, the CONSTITUTION is the measure of INVALID law.
Again, invalid federal law MUST be resisted and nullified by the individual states.
I mean, sure if you want to resist the federal and state government because you subjectively believe the law is invalid but no legislature has repealed the law or court invalidated it, that’s fine, but all that means is that you’ve made a moral decision to break the law.
So don’t be surprised or outraged if you end up in jail/contempt of court/punished by the system as a result.
The laughable thing about this is that she’s an elected democrat who is just doing this to bolster her reelection chances in a swing district.
They already did that in 1798.
Hard to nullify invalid and unconstitutional law all by yourself. That’s why the fight for freedom against unconstitutional federal acts, which by definition are acts of tyranny, must be waged at the state level.
But didn’t the American Revolution have its beginnings with individuals declaring the tyranny of oppressive English law to be invalid? “The moral decision to break the law” under these circumstances can possibly best be described by words in the Declaration of Independence:
“[W]hen 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.”
We have a moral DUTY to resist and nullify unconstitutional federal acts. It may be that such resistance could forestall and possibly prevent secession. But the Declaration of Independence gives us the moral template of the required steps for eventual secession, every step hoping against state secession unless or until necessary.
No, the effort in 1798 relied on cooperation of other states. Kentucky (and other states) need to resist on the merits of their own individual states evaluation and notification of how and why a federal act is unconstitutional.
Of course it is. That's why Petreaus was crucified and Hillary gets to skate.
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