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."
So is he saying that we are living under a fascist ruler? I would say so.
Yeah - but there are four others on SCOTUS who are worse.Easy to get fixated on Kennedy, when he is good on some important things - and the Democrat nominees rarely get anything right.
Interesting that Kennedy hasn’t resigned.
The problem with the “Christians with convictions should resign” notion is it plays into the plans of their sociopolitical opponents.
Consider Kennedy’s statement a warning, to wit: “get out now, before we drive you out with escalating force.”
Yes, exactly.
The point here isn’t about Government officials doing or not doing their jobs. It’s about what reasonable accomidations need to be made for individual government employees required to engage in acts they believe to be immoral.
Kennedy seems to be straight out chucking the concept that reasonable accomidations based on faith and morality can exist for government employees.
THAT is scary as all hell coming from a SCOTUS Justice. Especially since that Justice is the asknowleged “moderate” on the Court.
Kennedy is one of the primary reasons for the development of Existential Cage Theory. He, more than most liberals, belongs in one.
He should be put on display in a public square like a zoo animal as an examole to others, and in a nod to the primal wisdom of our monkey brethren, have feces flung at him.
Mr. Justice Kennedy is a public official.
I don't see him resigning. Do you?
Fascinating ...
This is Kennedy talking, his children are grown.
Roberts dissented in Obergefell.
He’s so stupid, he insulted himself.
It’s OUR government, Mr. Justice.
Why don’t you get out ?
Being a Christian in the US today is similar to being a Jew in 1933 Germany. Looks like Kennedy kind of agrees.
Or.. tell Hitler no and keep a pistol around in case he gets any funny ideas.
It’s not a good analogy.
The Jews in 1933 were a tiny minority. Christians today? Not so much.
By the numbers, if Christians wanted to rise up and change things through the ballot box, they could. Easily. If they wanted to rise up and change things through mass boycotts, they could. Easily.
In 1933 Germany didn’t have those options.
A more appropriate analogy would have been, “If you take the Queen’s shilling, you must do the Queen’s bid.”
Did I miss something, or did “Justice” Kennedy just compare our current government to the Third Reich?
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when 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, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
>>Very interesting that a totalitarian society in 20th-century Germany is what occurs to Kennedy as an example of the situation here today.
Any thinking person can see the many similarities.
No-—ALL unjust law is “null and void”. Justice is the Queen of Virtue and ALL JUST LAWS have to promote ‘public virtue”-—not Marxism (theft/welfare/destruction of biological connections).
That was stated by Justice John Marshall (father of American Jurisprudence), MLK, Jr., and the Nuremberg Trials-—they ALSO ADDED that it is the DUTY of EVERYONE to disobey UNJUST LAWS (any laws that promote irrational, vile, unnatural use of the human body—or slavery—or baby killing).
We need to put this so-called “Justice” in prison for Treason and throwing out Rule of Law (Higher Laws/God’s) for Stalin’s satanic constitution.
Kennedy has turned out to be as insane as most of the rest of the lefty libturds on the court
Yes, Kennedy just compared our current government to the Third Reich. Who does he think he is? Julius Streicher or Josef Goebbels?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...
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