A Michigan lawmaker is introducing a resolution urging state officials to ignore the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, calling the decision “illegitimate” and urging officials to “re-claim this state’s sovereignty by not recognizing or enforcing.”
MLive.com reports:
State Rep. Tom Hooker, R-Byron Center, read his pending resolution out loud Wednesday during a “rally to protect religious people and stop persecution of religious people” outside the Michigan Capitol.
“The Supreme Court is not a Legislature,” Hooker said. “Courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgement of legislative bodies or elected and passed laws.”
The rally, organized by a Christian non-profit called Salt & Light Global, drew a couple hundred people to Lansing.Other speakers included Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, who is expected to introduce a similar resolution in the upper chamber, and Rep. Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, who told the crowd that he will co-sponsor Hooker’s version in the House.
Hooker’s resolution reads, in part:
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of the Michigan Legislature that the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges is illegitimate because the five justice majority, in reaching its decision, acted without constitutional authority and unconstitutionally usurped power expressly reserved by the United States Constitution to the states and the people; and be it further
Resolved, That under these circumstances, it is the duty of the politically accountable branches of the federal and state governments to preserve and protect constitutional governance under the rule of law; and be it further
Resolved, That we urge the Governor and all executive officers in the state of Michigan to uphold their oaths of office and re-claim this state’s sovereignty by not recognizing or enforcing the United States Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision as a rule of law …
Speaking at the “religious liberty” rally outside the state capitol, Colbeck, who plans to sponsor a Senate version of the bill, compared the position of Christians in America to that of people persecuted by ISIS.
