Rep. Steve King appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio program yesterday, where he warned that a Supreme Court ruling striking down state bans on gay marriage “throws this country into an endless trauma.”
Likening any such ruling to Roe v Wade, the Iowa Republican declared that “the public will not accept a huge decision of the Supreme Court that’s not a decision of the people” before confusingly comparing it to the Dred Scott decision by seemingly suggesting that it would take a constitutional amendment and decades of legislation to overturn any decision legalizing gay marriage.
“Dred Scott back in 1857, the court thought that they were going to solve the slavery question by telling Congress that they couldn’t free the slaves and telling the county that slaves could never be citizens,” King said. “They made that decision and that helped move us towards a civil war … Then in 1866, there was a civil rights act; that wasn’t enough to get the job done. There was the Thirteenth Amendment that freed the slaves. The Fourteenth Amendment that guaranteed them full citizenship and then we still were a hundred years before we got the Civil Rights Act.”
“If all of that to eliminate slavery, do they really think that they can do what they’re going to do to marriage, with one decision of the Supreme Court and society is going to accept that?” he asked. “Society is in for a long battle”:
