Originally published September 3 2015
Christianity now criminalized in America
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) The arrest of a local county clerk in Kentucky who has refused to issue marriage certificates to gay couples because she says it violates her religious principles signifies, for many, the criminalization of Christian beliefs.
Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis was jailed for contempt September 4 by order of U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning after ignoring his previous order for her to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. This followed last summer's U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding lower federal courts that had ruled state laws banning such unions were a violation of the Constitution's equal protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Insisting that her "conscience will not allow" her to issue said licenses, Davis told Bunning in court, "God's moral law conflicts with my job duties. You can't be separated from something that's in your heart and in your soul."
That left Bunning no choice but to jail her because she defied his order.
"Oaths mean things"
"Her good faith belief is simply not a viable defense," Bunning said, noting that allowing an individual's beliefs to supersede the court's authority would set a dangerous precedent, CBS-DC reported.
"I myself have genuinely held religious beliefs," the judge added, but "I took an oath."
"Mrs. Davis took an oath. Oaths mean things."
For her part, Davis and her attorney, Matt Staver, argued that her First Amendment religious freedoms were being violated not only by the Bunning order but more broadly by the U.S. Supreme Court, in which five justices – four liberals and Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's notorious "swing" voter – overturned centuries of tradition and hundreds of years of precedent; after all, states have always decided the rules for what does and does not constitute "marriage".
It isn't so much that the lower federal court is now obliged to follow the Supreme Court's ruling – it is. Rather, it is a question of which constitutional right has more weight in today's America, and it is increasingly obvious that it isn't religious freedom – or state's rights under the Tenth Amendment.
Supporters of the high court ruling say "legalizing same-sex marriage" was the only correct decision to make, alleging that had the court gone the other way, it would have amounted to an institutionalization of bigotry and discrimination. However, there is another side to that argument – namely, that by ruling the way it did, the high court essentially institutionalized bigotry and discrimination against people of faith.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court would have been on solid legal and constitutional ground had the justices merely refused to take the case at all, citing the precedence that states have traditionally made all rules governing marriage. Now, critics of the high court's decision wonder what is next. Legalizing polygamy? The marriage of humans to animals? Child marriage?
It's not so out of the realm. There is already an "organization" – the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA - that advocates "enjoyable, consensual" love between adult males and adolescent boys.
High court has gotten it wrong before
Following the high court's gay marriage ruling, online magazine Politico featured a piece calling for the legalization of polygamy in which the writer argued "the Supreme Court decision clearly shows that marriage should be a broadly applicable right—one that forces the government to recognize...a private couple's 'love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.'"
Where does the proverbial "slippery slope" finally end? Critics of the Supreme Court's decision say that will happen when all vestiges of traditional marriage are wiped away by activists on the federal judiciary who have managed to carve a "right" out of the Constitution that was never there and was roundly rejected by voters in states around the country when the question was put before them on ballot issue after ballot issue. This included uber-liberal California, by the way.
Critics also point out that the Supreme Court has been wrong on a host of other issues in the past as well, such as upholding FDR's mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the Dred Scott decision and others.
"Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country. We must defend #ReligiousLiberty!" GOP presidential contender and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee posted on Twitter following Davis' arrest.
There is no doubt he is right.
Sources include:
Washington.CBSLocal.com
NAMBLA.org
Politico.com
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