Alan Keyes: Gay Marriage Decision Is Treason, Worse Than Dred Scott

Right-wing pundit Alan Keyes told WorldNetDaily readers this weekend that the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage was one of the most “treasonous” acts in American history, warning that if “the Obergefell decision stands, America’s constitutional government of, by, and for the people, falls.”

Calling on readers to ask God to reverse “this Court’s supremely treasonous act,” Keyes wrote that “Americans still loyal to the premises of right and justice must emphatically reject this decision.”

He added that it represented an even greater injustice than British colonial rule in the U.S., the Fugitive Slave Acts and the Dred Scott ruling.

This week I published an essay in two parts on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision. I concluded the essay with the words quoted above. Americans still loyal to the premises of right and justice must emphatically reject this decision. They must refuse to submit to it, just as in colonial times America’s first patriots refused to submit to British taxes imposed without regard for the will of legislatures elected by the people; just as in the years before the last Civil War, people of good conscience refused to abide by the Fugitive Slave acts and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision; just as in the last century people committed to God’s endowment of human justice opposed government sanctioned racial segregation and discrimination, enforced in disregard of the equality of nature conferred by the title of humanity.

The Obergefell decision is a more directly treasonous betrayal of constitutional law and justice than any of those previous acts of tyranny. As ratified by the American people, the U.S. Constitution derives its authority from their sovereign will. In the Declaration of Independence they cite the authority of “the laws of nature and of Nature’s God” and the will and judgment of the Creator and Judge of all the world, as the basis for their claim of sovereignty. By purporting to extend the name of marriage to acts and relations that make no imperative contribution to the common good of human nature as endowed by the Creator, God, the U.S. Supreme Court challenges that will and judgment, treating it as of no account.

If the Obergefell decision stands, America’s constitutional government of, by, and for the people, falls. This is the import and real intent of the Obergefell decision. Note well that by shutting down the font of legitimacy, the justices of the Supreme Court have outflanked any and all provisions of the Constitution. It is, for example, a rationally necessary and well-established principle that the free exercise of religion does not extend to crimes. If, in lawful exercise of sovereign power (sovereign meaning especially, for the sake of the common good) the body that bears responsibility for the law enacts a prohibition against some unjust act, the fact that the action is essential in consequence of even a sincere and longstanding religious belief does not constrain the sovereign’s responsibility to enforce the criminal law.

What we have here is a wholesale act of judicial nullification. If the United States were a monarchy, the sovereign’s throne would be vacant. But America has no throne. The seat of power is in the heart, mind and faithful courage of the people of the United States. If, from that seat of power, the Creator God still rules, this Court’s supremely treasonous act will not stand. Faithful to God’s rule, the people will rise up before His Judgment seat, and “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intention,” we will stand firm to uphold the government of right and decent liberty God’s hand of Providence still extends toward us. It remains within our reach, so long as we still trust in Him.