Posted on 09/09/2015 9:35:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When the ACLU of Colorado likened a baker who won't supply cakes for gay weddings to a police officer who refuses to protect a church or synagogue, it blurred the distinction between private action and state action, which is vital to a free society. Conservatives who defend Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who last week went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are making the same mistake. Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said a federal judge's decision to hold Davis in contempt of court amounted to "the criminalization of a Christian for believing in the traditional definition of marriage." He warned that pastors, photographers, caterers and florists who decline to participate in gay weddings could receive similar treatment.
"We must defend religious liberty and never surrender to judicial tyranny," Huckabee said. "This is a reckless, appalling, out-of-control decision that undermines the Constitution of the United States and our fundamental right to religious liberty."
Other Republican presidential contenders likewise framed Davis' refusal to comply with the Supreme Court decision overturning state bans on gay marriage as an exercise of the religious freedom protected by the First Amendment. "I think it's absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberty," said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was even more emphatic. "Today, judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny," Cruz said in a statement. "Today, for the first time ever, the government arrested a Christian woman for living according to her faith. This is wrong. This is not America."
As my Reason colleague Scott Shackford noted, Cruz seems to have forgotten about a long line of Christian women who were arrested for living according to their faith as they understood it, including abolitionists, integrationists, alcohol prohibitionists, peace activists and death penalty opponents. More to the point, Davis was not arrested for living according to her faith; she was arrested for trying to impose her faith on others.
The government, unlike private businesses, is constitutionally obligated to treat all citizens equally under the law. Last June, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court said that obligation means states must issue marriage licenses to couples without regard to their sexual orientation.
Many conservatives disagree with that decision. Huckabee even likens it to Dred Scott v. Sandford, the 1857 decision upholding slavery. Because Obergefell, whatever the merits of its legal reasoning, expands liberty rather than contracting it, that comparison strikes me as inapposite, to say the least. Refusing to recognize gay marriage is hardly a moral cause on par with ending slavery.
In any case, as a representative of her state's government, Davis is obligated to comply with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection guarantee, just as county clerks who objected to marriages between people of different races (even on religious grounds) were obligated to issue licenses for such marriages after the court concluded that bans on miscegenation violated that principle. If Davis cannot in good conscience issue marriage licenses to gay couples, the honorable thing for her to do would be to resign.
People cannot, in the name of religious liberty, insist on keeping a job when they are unwilling to perform the duties it entails. That goes for private as well as government employees. If Davis took a job that required her to photograph gay weddings or bake cakes for them, she would have no right to reject those tasks on religious grounds and expect to keep the job.
The situation would be different if Davis started her own bakery or photography business. In that case, she should be (and in Kentucky would be) free to turn away work related to gay weddings based on her religious objections to such unions.
The ACLU is wrong to argue that such a refusal is essentially the same as unequal treatment by the government. So is Mike Huckabee.
-- Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
Great. Another Homo opinion.
I must confess... I have absolute contempt for the court. Supreme and otherwise.
Genesis 1
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."
29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.
31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
“How can a ruling by the SC become the law of the land?”
___
Good question. Ignorance and compliance is the answer.
“USSC can only void laws not make them up or change them.”
___
You got part of that right. The “void” part, not so much.
No Mailmen were ever fired or jailed for refusing to deliver Draft Notices during Vietnam. But, they had a government union to represent them.
The liberal justices on the Supreme Court have no right to impose their view of marriage on the whole country.
So when do I get to marry my dog for the health benefits?
It’s in the penumbra somewhere. Ask Traitor Roberts.
Got it, thanks. That explains everything...
The way things are going in this country... I'd say pretty soon.
Amen and Amen. The Natural Law as given us through the English common law (in contrast to many other inaccurate theories of the Natural Law) and cited in a myriad of United States Court Cases, including SCOTUS cases, IS THE UMBRELLA UNDER WHICH EVERY LAW AND EVERY COURT DECISION MUST BE VIEWED TO DETERMINE WHETHER IT SHOULD BE ACCEPTED AND/OR OBEYED.
How many times have Judges overturned other Judges (not counting the 9th Circus Court)?
Can someone please help me find out how many clerks married gay couples in defiance of “accepted law” and did not get sentanced to jail for breaking the law?
The Law is all about selective enforcement. Has been for quite a while. Best to go Galt and make it difficult for the Jackboots to find you.
But others have the right to impose their views of marriage on her?
But others have the right to impose their views of marriage on her?
LOL, I see what you did there.
She is the only one. But then again she is the only one who was sued and defied the judges order, resulting in the jailing for contempt. I'm sure gay activists will get around to the other ones.
The states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect gay marriage. And pro-gay activist justices had no right to work outside the framework of the Constitution by legislating the so-called right to gay “marriage” from the bench, effectively stealing 10th Amendment-protected state powers to regulate marriage to do so.
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