UPDATE: We’ve posted some video clips of the press conference’s highlights.
The mood was apparently apoplectic at a press conference held by gay-rights opponents in front of the Alabama state judicial building yesterday, as one Republican state official called the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision “an assault on God, on Christian heritage and on our culture” and warned that the “runaway judiciary is a bigger threat to the United States than ISIS” and “liberal judges have done [more] harm to our country and our Constitution than Al Qaeda.”
Public Service Commissioner Chip Beeker, who made the ISIS remarks, was joined by Joe Godfrey of the Alabama Citizens Action Project, who warned that Christians will soon be fired from their jobs just for attending church and by John Eidsmoe, the influential Christian Reconstructionist thinker and Michele Bachmann mentor, who said that the Supreme Court’s decision is moot because two justices who had performed legal same-sex weddings should have recused themselves.
Eidsmoe is the senior counsel at the Foundation for Moral Law, the organization started by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who has been clashing with the federal courts over marriage equality. The group, which is now led by Moore’s wife, Kayla, has questioned the “validity” of the decision and vowed to keep on fighting it.
The Montgomery Advertiser was on the scene of the press conference:
Public Service Commissioner Chip Beeker told the crowd that “five unelected and unaccountable justices imposed their will on the people of Alabama and the United States.”
“This was not an interpretation of the Constitution. It was an assault on God, on Christian heritage and on our culture,” Beeker said.
“The runaway judiciary is a bigger threat to the United States than Isis. Liberal judges have done harm to our country and our constitution than Al Qaeda.”
…
Joe Godfrey, executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, which lobbies the Legislature on behalf of churches, said people who attend churches that oppose same-sex marriage could be threatened with losing their jobs.
“I predict it’s going to happen when big corporations, CEOs, tell people that work as their employees, ”You know, if you keep going to that church that teaches against homosexuality, teaches what the Bible says, we’re going to have to let you go.’
“So they’re going to be forced to make a choice between a church that they attend and have been attending for years, and their job.”
…
[John] Eidsmoe also said the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision was illegitimate because two of the justices who supported it — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan — had performed same-sex marriages.
The foundation had filed a motion for Ginsburg and Kagan to recuse themselves from the case.
“They were incapable of considering this question objectively,” Eidsmore said. “And therefore, they had every duty to recuse.”
