SCOTUS, Meet the American Principles Project

Last June 26 the US landscape fundamentally changed. On that day SCOTUS announced its majority opinion that “same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry in all States” and that “there is no lawful basis for a State to refuse to recognize a lawful same-sex marriage performed in another State on the ground of its same-sex character.”

Many evangelicals, of course, were praying and working for the opposite outcome. In the months leading up to the SCOTUS ruling, a group of prominent Christian leaders published the Defend Marriage pledge. Some 185 courageous citizens—including Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, and Rick Santorum—publicly signed this statement. Their willingness to go on record calling the court to virtue and responsibility rallied 50,000 more people to sign. (Three cheers for 50K but the number should have been much higher).

That was then … this is now.

Since the SCOTUS ruling, believers in traditional marriage have been warned the argument is over. Time to fall in line. The highest court of the land has ruled; no further debate is appropriate, or even possible.

Whether those expressing that view would have said the same thing after SCOTUS promoted African slavery is an interesting question.

SCOTUS ruling declared invalid

At any rate, fast forward four months … here’s good news for the 50,000, and the millions who share their view of marriage: a group of academics, led by Robert P. George of Princeton, has declared the SCOTUS ruling invalid.

In a document titled “Statement Calling for Constitutional Resistance to Obergefell v. Hodges,” 65 “scholars and informed citizens” critique the Obergefell decision from a constitutional perspective.

The statement quotes Abraham Lincoln (on the SCOTUS 1857 Dred Scott decision) saying, in effect, that a judicial decision like Obergefell lacks multiple claims to legitimacy and is therefore unworthy of compliance.

“It cannot therefore be taken to have settled the law of the United States.”

Here are some highlights:

The Court’s majority opinion eschewed reliance on the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution … [and] supplied no compelling reasoning to show why it is unjustified for the laws of the states to sustain marriage as it has been understood for millennia as the union of husband and wife.
Obergefell should be declared to be [anti-constitutional and illegitimate] … by the other branches of government and by citizens of the United States.
The Constitution is not whatever a majority of Supreme Court justices say it is. 
Officeholders in the United States … are pledged to uphold the Constitution … not the will of five members of the Supreme Court.

With untrammeled boldness the group calls on “all federal and state officeholders” not only to refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent, but to “pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons”!

Three cheers for the American Principles Project.

SCOTUS ruling suggests America hasn’t been discipled

Do you notice any parallels to another American movement of free people alarmed about the loss of liberty, a movement that emerged after years of “growing estrangement” between the government and “a large and influential segment” of its constituents, an estrangement caused by government “attempts to assert greater control over” the affairs of those constituents? (Hint: the URL will take you to the Encyclopedia Britannica article on the American Revolution.)

Obergefell, of course, passed by the narrowest possible margin. Justice Kennedy, whose “swing vote” pushed another lamentable decision over the line, reasoned on the basis of a constitutional right of citizens “to define and express their identity.”

In a universe absent any providential God, such logic might be unassailable. We do not live in such a universe. That a SCOTUS justice could live and act as if we did is an indication that the discipling of the nation is incomplete.

Is there any place where you would be willing to peacefully pay a price to stand for moral law? Is there a situation in which you would exercise civil disobedience? Where would that line be?

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May the American Principles Project mark the beginning of the end of same-sex “marriage” in the US.