The war on America’s LGBT community is in full swing this week as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments for Obergefell v. Hodges, a gay marriage case that the court will begin considering on Tuesday.
At issue is a 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding same-sex marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee which runs contrary to decisions by other circuit courts upholding the Constitutionality of same-sex marriage.
In the wake of Tuesdays hearing, there have been several flagrant attacks on both the courts and the LGBT community by anti-gay activist, groups, religious leaders and legislators. Below are 5 examples of such stunning attacks.
1. Texas Republican Party Platform endorses “gay conversion therapy,” a procedure “viewed as harmful and useless by psychology experts.” Reporting on the new platform, adopted last June, The Texas Tribune noted that:
For years, the party’s plank on homosexuality said that “the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit.” This year, that was replaced with a plank that maintains the party’s opposition to gay marriage and states that homosexuality is a “chosen behavior that is contrary to the fundamental unchanging truths.”
2. Last November a pastor in Arizona argued that AIDS/HIV would be eradicated under the bible if gays were executed. Steven Anderson, a Baptist pastor in Tempe, Arizona, called for the mass extermination of LGBT people on November 30, 2014 in a sermon entitled “AIDS: The Judgement of God.” Arguing that members of the gay community are “filled with disease because of the judgement of God,” Anderson cited Leviticus 18:22, adding,
It was right there in the Bible all along … It’s curable right there… if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running rampant.
You might also remember Anderson from his recent sermons calling for the death of President Obama.
3. More recently, an Orange County lawyer submitted an initiative calling for the”death by bullets” of anyone engaging in sodomy in the State of California.
The San Diego Gay & Lesbian News reported that Huffington Beach lawyer Matt McLaughlin “filed his notice in late February and it was marked as received on Feb. 26 by the Initiative Coordinator in the California Attorney General’s Office.” The initiative, titled by McLaughlin as the “Sodomite Suppression Act,” proposes to change California Penal Code Section 39 stated that because same-sex relationships are “a monstrous evil that Almighty God … commands us to suppress,” then anyone engaging in same-sex conduct shall “be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”
4. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) introduced the Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015, last week which would remove jurisdiction to rule on gay marriage from federal courts according to The Hill.
King stated in a press release that:
For too long, federal courts have overstepped their constitutionally limited duty to interpret the Constitution. Rather, federal courts have perverted the Constitution to make law and create constitutional rights to things such as privacy, birth control, and abortion. These unenumerated, so-called constitutionally-protected rights were not envisioned by our Founding Fathers.
My bill strips Article III courts of jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court of appellate jurisdiction, ‘to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, any type of marriage.’
5. Not wanting to be outdone, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced The Protect Marriage from the Courts Act and the Restoration of Marriage Amendment, which would also limit the federal courts’ jurisdiction to consider same-sex marriage cases. In his own press statement, Cruz wrote:
The people should decide the issue of marriage, not the courts. The union of a man and a woman has been the building block of society since the dawn of history, and the people in numerous states have repeatedly affirmed that truth in their laws. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits that. In fact, it is inconceivable that when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, Americans would have understood they were sowing the seeds for courts to invalidate traditional marriage. And yet that is precisely what has happened. Judges have taken an unprecedented activist role to strike down state marriage laws. I am proud to introduce this legislation to uphold the institution of marriage and to safeguard the states’ authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
6. Monday, Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries, told reporters from the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court that he’s filing a motion calling for the recusal of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. Speaking to reporters, Lively stated that:
Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, knowing full well that unique legal issues regarding the definition of marriage would soon come before them, deliberately officiated at so-called homosexual wedding ceremonies creating not merely the appearance of bias, but an actual and blatant conflict of interest.
In my personal view they have committed an unparalleled breach of judicial ethics by elevating the importance of their own favored political cause of gay rights above the integrity of the court and of our nation.
The Hill reports that Lively and “more than a dozen leaders of anti-gay-marriage groups stood behind a wall of empty cardboard filing boxes stacked on the steps of the court on Monday morning.”
The boxes — 60 in all — were there to “symbolically” represent 300,000 restraining orders that Faith2Action President Janet Porter said will be delivered to the Supreme Court and to Congress to keep the justices from ruling on gay marriage.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login