Conservative commentator Robert Knight is not optimistic about the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in a set of marriage equality cases, telling a West Virginia radio program yesterday that “unless God intervenes, the court looks poised to create a brand-new right to gay marriage out of the Constitution, which is just literally insane and absurd.”
Knight was particularly annoyed by Justice Kennedy’s comments about marriage conferring “dignity” and “ennoblement” to gay couples. “I was thinking about that,” he told Huntington-based talk radio host Tom Roten, “and I thought, the way you’re doing that is by stealing the moral capital of marriage and conveying it to other relationships that aren’t anything like it. That is not ennobling them, that is transferring moral capital.”
“It’s like taking a losing team, and they feel bad about their losing record,” he explained, “so they say, okay, now they’re going to have the same record as this winning team over here so everybody feels better.”
Knight was also upset that the only children discussed during the Supreme Court arguments were children being raised by gay parents. “What about the vast impact on children across America if gay marriage is legalized?” he asked. “Think of the textbook changes. Think of what schools will be teaching directly against the beliefs of millions of American parents. I mean, we’re putting a counterfeit in the law, we’re going to use the law to impose it on the country.”
Although the attorneys arguing on behalf of marriage equality at the court explicitly noted that clergy in marriage equality states are not required to marry same-sex couples, Knight falsely claimed that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli had said that question should be left to the states.
“Think in the free country of ours, they’re casually talking about using the power of the state to force pastors to bless something that the Bible says is an abomination,” he said. “We are really in an insane age here when it’s come to that. And unless the American people rise up and say ‘enough,’ it’s just going to get worse.”
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