Denunciations of today’s court rulings striking down marriage equality bans in Indiana and Utah are beginning to trickle in from anti-gay activists, with the two cases representing additional defeats for an already struggling movement.
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council — ignoring the fact that one of the Tenth Circuit Court judges who ruled in favor of marriage equality was recommended by Sen. Jim Inhofe and appointed by George W. Bush — blamed the rulings on the Obama administration and leftists who have been “packing the federal courts with liberal jurists” in order to realize “a radical social agenda.”
Perkins also said that he will represent the “indignant Americans who are tired of seeing the foundations of a free and just society destroyed by a handful of black-robed tyrants.”
While disturbing, today’s rulings come as no surprise given the rising disdain for the rule of law promoted by the Obama administration. These latest rulings are not just about redefining marriage but they are a further attempt by the courts to untether our public policies from the democratic process, as well as the anthropological record.
While judges can, by judicial fiat, declare same-sex ‘marriage’ legal, they will never be able to make it right. The courts, for all their power, can’t overturn natural law. What they can do is incite a movement of indignant Americans, who are tired of seeing the foundations of a free and just society destroyed by a handful of black-robed tyrants. The Left has long believed packing the federal courts with liberal jurists is the means of fulfilling a radical social agenda, as the American people refuse to endorse that agenda at the polls or through their elected representatives.
As we saw with Roe v. Wade in 1973 – despite the Left’s earnest hopes, the courts do not have the final say. The American people will have the final word as they experience the consequences of marriage redefinition and the ways in which it fundamentally alters America’s moral, cultural and political landscape.
Jeff Allen, an Indiana-based pastor and senior editor of BarbWire, called for “elected leaders and Christians [to] defiantly rise up and engage in civil disobedience” to stop this “national tragedy” and “the death of democracy.”
“Each victory for the homosexual activists represents another nail in America’s coffin,” he wrote, adding that “these decisions require that reason be jettisoned in favor of unrestrained deviancy.”
Federal courts in Indiana and Utah on Wednesday blatantly overthrew the will of the people and subversively imposed same-sex “marriage” on the citizens of both states. The judicial oligarchy (tyranny of the few) continues flexing the muscle of its apparently unchecked power. The death of democracy is undeniably upon us. Each victory for the homosexual activists represents another nail in America’s coffin.
According to WLFI.com, a ruling from an elitist U.S. District Judge in Indiana wrongly declared that the prohibition was unconstitutional because it violated guarantees of equal protection and due process.
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Separately, a rogue appeals court ruled 2-1 that Utah’s traditional marriage amendment was unconstitutional as well, saying that the gender of the two persons cannot be considered as a reason to deny a marriage license. And that’s just it — these decisions require that reason be jettisoned in favor of unrestrained deviancy.
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The light of morality and freedom is being brutishly snuffed out right before our very eyes. It’s a national tragedy unfolding at an accelerating pace.
And this is not a good harbinger of things to come — unless our elected leaders and Christians defiantly rise up and engage in civil disobedience.
National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown unsurprisingly accused the judges of “activism” and “sophistry.”
Today’s split decision of a panel of judges in the 10th Circuit is not surprising given that this Circuit refused to even order a stay of the district court decision when it came down during the Christmas holidays. While we strongly disagree with the two judges in the majority, we are encouraged by the strong defense of marriage articulated by Justice Paul Kelly in his dissent, and especially his defense of the sovereign right of the people of Utah to decide this issue for themselves. This principled recognition by a federal judge considering the marriage issue underscores that the people of a state are entitled to respect and deference in their desire to promote marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Indeed, the US Supreme Court decided in the Windsor case that the federal government must respect the right of states to define marriage. The majority in the Utah case engage in sophistry to attempt to argue their way around the Supreme Court’s ruling that it is up to the states to define marriage. As Justice Kelly noted in his dissent, ‘If the States are the laboratories of democracy, requiring every state to recognize same-gender unions—contrary to the views of its electorate and representatives—turns the notion of a limited national government on its head.’
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The elected representatives of the people of Indiana have decided, for good and proper reasons, to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It is judicial activism for a single judge to substitute his own views on marriage for the considered opinion of the people’s representatives. This is just the latest example of activism from the federal bench, but we fully expect this decision to eventually be reversed when the US Supreme Court upholds the right of states to define marriage as a man and a woman. In the meantime, it is imperative that the state legislature move forward a state constitutional amendment preserving marriage so that the people always remain in control of the definition of marriage in Indiana.
