Defending Kim Davis’ refusal to do her big government job, OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) now posit that Individuals have a “Religious Liberty” right to not have to follow the mandates of law – even if the applicable government mandate comes from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). How will this newly-evolved OMOW position apply to the “Religious Liberty” of UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamy supporters)?
This is the fourth part of a series of posts pertaining to the County Clerk in Kentucky, named Kim Davis, who refused to do her $80,000 a year government job to issue marriage control licenses after the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges (June 26, 2015) legalized same sex marriage in all States.
Pope Francis said on Monday [9/28/2015] government officials have a “human right” to refuse to discharge a duty, such as issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals, if they feel it violates their conscience.
Speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane on his way back to Rome from the U.S., the pope said, “Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right.”
Without directly alluding to the Davis case, the pope said in Italian, “I can’t have in mind all cases that can exist about conscientious objection but, yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right.”
He added that if “someone does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right.”
He said that by denying some rights over others, “we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying: ‘This right has merit, this one does not.’”
Liberty Counsel & Vatican confirm: Pope met with Kim Davis
On Tuesday, September 29th, the organization assisting Kim Davis, Liberty Counsel, reported the meeting.
Kim Davis said, “I was humbled to meet Pope Francis. Of all people, why me?” Davis continued, “I never thought I would meet the Pope. Who am I to have this rare opportunity? I am just a County Clerk who loves Jesus and desires with all my heart to serve him.” Kim said, “Pope Francis was kind, genuinely caring, and very personable. He even asked me to pray for him. Pope Francis thanked me for my courage and told me to ‘stay strong.'”
“The challenges we face in America regarding the sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious freedom are the same universal challenges Christians face around the world. Religious freedom is a human right that comes from God. These values are shared in common by people of faith, and the threats to religious freedom are universal. Kim Davis has become a symbol of this worldwide conflict between Christian faith and recent cultural challenges regarding marriage,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.
On Thursday, September 24, in the afternoon after his historic address to Congress, just a few minutes before flying to New York City, Pope Francis received, spoke with, and embraced Kim Davis — the Kentucky County Clerk who was jailed in early September for refusing to sign the marriage licenses of homosexual couples who wished to have their civil marriages certified by the state of Kentucky.
The meeting with the Holy Father was a moment of consolation to Kim.
It strengthened her conviction, she told me, to obey the law of God, before the law of man.
It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that, when the human law contradicts the natural law, it is not a valid law.
Irony of newly-evolved Catholic position on “Religious Liberty”
That the Catholic Institution would now assert that position is an irony that must not be overlooked. In my previous post (“Kim Davis, Religious Liberty, and Polygamy – Part 3“), I had explicitly demonstrated the following:
What we therefore see is evident. The 1878 SCOTUS decision of Reynolds v. United States and the anti-constitutional anti-polygamy laws were “rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) have been perpetually pointing this fact out to OMOWs. But OMOWs stiffneckedly turn a deaf ear and continue to willingly embrace the anti-constitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control that neither “Nature nor Nature’s God” have ever forbidden.
Indeed, the very concept of “Religious Liberty” directly arose (half a millenium ago) out of the Reformation as Christians (known as Protestants) fled the governments of Europe that were directly and tightly controlled by the Catholic institution, to enforce its religious doctrines.
One of those government-enforced Catholic-invented man-made doctrines is OMOW – one man one woman.
If the contemporary Catholic institution has finally “come around” to that paradigm of “Religious Liberty” rights as a freedom of conscience, then it directly applies to UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) too. After all, UCAP is vastly more Biblical and Natural than any government imposed socialism of OMOW.
Justice Kennedy: Kim Davis could have chosen to resign
But what about the “Religious Liberty” of people who work as functionaries of big government to process the laws of big government, even as their religious beliefs oppose such things?
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the Supreme Court’s landmark June ruling on marriage equality across the U.S., said that public officials should step down instead of doing something they saw as “morally wrong,” seeming to refer to Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, SFGate.com reported Tuesday. Davis had refused to issue marriage licenses to homosexuals on religious grounds even after the ruling.
At an event at Harvard Law School, a student asked Kennedy whether officials were bound to follow the “new insights” by the justices on abortion and marriage issues. “The rule of law is that, as a public official in performing your legal duties, you are bound to enforce the law,” Kennedy told Harvard Law School students, without mentioning Davis’ name, according to the SFGate.com.
The 79-year-old justice also said that he felt for officials who faced “difficult moral questions” when their religious beliefs clashed with legal authorities. Such a clash “requires considerable introspection,” Kennedy reportedly said.
“But certainly, in an offhand comment, it would be difficult for me to say that people are free to ignore a decision by the Supreme Court,” Kennedy added, stating that the officials have the duty to follow the law.
“Great respect, it seems to me, has to be given to people who resign rather than do something they view as morally wrong,” Kennedy said, referring to three German judges who resigned instead of following the dictates of the Nazi government.
OMOWs Whine, Weep, and Wail
Many would-be “conservatives” proverbially went, “Waaaahhh,” whining, weeping, and wailing over Kennedy’s response.
“I think it’s a two-way street, that justices who don’t follow the Constitution ought to resign if they can’t do their job,” said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian legal organization that represents Davis and dissident clerks in Alabama. “I think the Supreme Court does not have unlimited authority and that five justices cannot say what they want to if it’s not based on the Constitution.”
At the would-be “conservative” CNSNews.com, one writer wept,
It was very disappointing that Justice Kennedy’s reported answer failed to acknowledge or make any mention of respect for or protection of the rights of those who have strong religious or moral objections to judicial-created rights such as the right to same-sex marriage. Recognition for newly-minted constitutional rights such as same-sex marriage does not require disregard for the long-established constitutional rights of conscience of those who cannot in good faith adherence to their deeply-held religious or moral values support the new judicial invention.
Cruz said, “When a Supreme Court justice compares his own lawless rulings to the draconian oppression of the Nazis – and says that Christians should resign from public office if they will not surrender to his imperious decrees – that really says it all.”
Irony of OMOWs’ newly-evolved position on “Religious Liberty”
That OMOWs would now assert that position is another irony that must not be overlooked. In my previous post (“Kim Davis, Religious Liberty, and Polygamy – Part 2“), I revealed the evolution of the OMOWs’ position:
Consequently, UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamy supporters) have perpetually been oppressed by the unconstitutional marriage control of the OMOWs’ anti-polygamy laws.
When UCAPs plead with OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) to remember that the “freedom of religion” clause of the First Amendment does not permit such marriage control tyranny, OMOWs respond by repeating the words from the Reynolds decision that “religious liberty” is supposedly no excuse for disobeying law. To wit, when it comes to law:
Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief?
To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.
That very assertion from the Reynolds “religious liberty” precedent has been the big government go-to response by OMOW “conservatives” in almost every discussion about the anti-constitutional tyranny of anti-polygamy marriage control.
OMOWs have transferred themselves from being the persecutors against UCAP “religious liberty” to now claiming that their own “religious liberties” are being persecuted by SSMs (same sex marriage supporters).
OMOWs misunderstand the Constitution backwards
Looking more deeply, we also see that these OMOW cries incorrectly reverse the direction of how the Constitution functions in limiting government and freeing individuals. They forget that, while Government Powers must be enumerated, Individual Rights do not.
The Ninth Amendment codifies that Rights of Individuals do not have to be exactly, expressly, or explicitly written/enumerated in the text of the Constitution to still factually exist as a true Right of Individuals. Conversely, the Tenth Amendment codifies that the powers of the federal government do specifically have to be so exactly, expressly, or explicitly written/enumerated in the text of the Constitution in order to be allowably authorized at all.
In this context, although Obergefell v. Hodges was half-right & half-wrong, the right of individuals to marriage does not have to be in the Constitution to still be valid. More importantly, it is precisely because government marriage control is not codified in the text of the Constitution that the federal government is prohibited from having any powers to enforce it at all.
And that thereby reveals and renders the OMOWs’ historically-favorite marriage control SCOTUS Decision (the anti-polygamy precedent), Reynolds v. United States of 1878, to be wholly unconstitutional in any State of the United States.
If anything, therefore, the OMOW cries against SCOTUS overreach should more technically and only apply to that 1878 precedent that criminalized polygamy. While it is proper for SCOTUS to recognize and protect true Rights of Individuals that are not enumerated in the Constitution, it is not proper for SCOTUS to allow the federal government to enforce marriage control powers that are not so expressly enumerated.
As such, within such a now-corrected context, that which Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver said above would otherwise indeed be correct, when he said, “the Supreme Court does not have unlimited authority and that [..] justices cannot say what they want to if it’s not based on the Constitution.” But that statement actually and only may correctly apply to Reynolds v. United States of 1878, the SCOTUS decision that unconstitutionally banned UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) and became the original precedent for thereafter justifying all unconstitutional big government marriage control.
Hence, it is doubly ironic that OMOWs now posit this newly-evolved defense of “Religious Liberty.”
What does this newly-evolved “Religious Liberty” mean?
As we ponder this evolution of position of the OMOWs, what do we see? In this matter with Kentucky’s Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, the Catholic institution’s Pope Francis, the Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel, many would-be conservative media, and other OMOWs et al, all posit that Individuals have a “Religious Liberty” right to not have to follow the mandates of law. They all assert that accommodations “must” be allowed for conscientious objection based on the fundamental “Religious Liberty” right. Moreover, they apply that position beyond Individuals making their own free choices, but even apply it to those performing jobs as functionaries of big government.
Most significant of all, such OMOWs assert this evolved position even if the applicable government mandate – to which someone religiously objects – comes from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).
In the wake of SCOTUS’ 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Decision, at least big government functionary, Kim Davis, could have simply let others do her job instead, or she could have just resigned. She always had freedom. But in the wake of SCOTUS’ 1878 Reynolds v. United States Decision, UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) never had such freedom without always facing the very real threat of an actual jail sentence, no matter what.
Hence, that evolved position requires such OMOWs to now have to accept the following truth. If a big government worker has that “Religious Liberty” right to not have to obey the mandate of law as “decided” by the Supreme Court of the United States, then all that much more do UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) have that exact same “Religious Liberty” right to not have to obey the mandate of law as “decided” by the Supreme Court of the United States – especially in the corrected context of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
Failing or refusing to embrace that truth is, as Pope Francis condemned above, “denying some rights over others, ‘we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying: “This right has merit, this one does not.”‘” As I previously wrote in Part 2 of this series,
An Easier Solution – For the sake of “Religious Liberty”
Better still, though, there is an easier way.
It is simple. Discontinue the anti-conservative idolatry of the Constitutional-abomination and Biblical-abomination of big government marriage control. No special rights for OMOW (one man one woman). No special rights for SSM (same sex marriage). And no special rights – nor criminalization – for UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy).
This proposal is my win-win solution. Conservatives get a political “win” of limited government. Liberals get a political “win” of “equality for all.” No one gets to re-define, impose, license, control, sanction, ban, or criminalize the definition of marriage on any other unrelated consenting adult. And everyone is truly free. Welcome back to a real America again.
Unfortunately for Kim Davis personally, though, yes… this solution could potentially put her out of her job as an $80,000 a year functionary of the false god of big socialist government. Since she says (out of her own mouth that) she only “desires with all [her] heart to serve” Jesus, we should be able to trust that she should be fine with that.
Ergo, for Kim Davis’ “Religious Liberty” and for us all, I invite all OMOWs – with their newly evolved position for “Religious Liberty” – to once and for all finally embrace my now-very-well-known proposal, the Polygamy Rights Win-Win Solution – Abolish all government marriage control for unrelated consenting adults.
Kim Davis was given an award for her “unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” But do OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) really believe in such principles? Because Obergefell v. Hodges being allowed and imposed is the fault of Reynolds v. United States being allowed and imposed, will OMOWs learn from this in order to now get consistent with these principles?
This is the third part of a series of posts pertaining to the County Clerk in Kentucky, named Kim Davis, who refused to do her $80,000 a year government job to issue marriage control licenses after the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges (June 26, 2015) legalized same sex marriage in all States.
In presenting the award, the FRC’s president, Tony Perkins, (starting at 17:10 in the above embedded video), read the inscription.
Integrity is the alignment of conviction and action in the pursuit of truth and justice.
In the course of history, men and women of integrity, few in number but deep in character, have pursued justice at great personal cost.
Whether it was
Abraham Lincoln asserting the constitutionally unsettled nature of the Dred Scott decision,
Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of a public bus, or
Martin Luther King risking the fang and claw of police dogs to end legal segregation,
our nation has been ennobled and enriched by historic citizens who declare their unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
Across the world, people of faith, the Yazidis, Baha’is, Jews, and Christians, by the tens of thousands, have borne mortal wounds for rejecting the demands of authorities to embrace a new system of belief, attack their neighbors, subjugate their wives, and pay taxes imposed on them on the basis of their religious heritage.
Hereto, people of profound integrity are standing against a tide of power that would attempt to make man-made law the source of all goodness and truth.
In today’s conflict over the meaning of the irreplaceable civil institution of marriage, one elected official, Kimberly Davis, of Rowan County, Kentucky, has inspired millions of her fellow Americans. As her words and actions attest, she has proceeded with an unshakable blend of humility and determination. Indsodoing, she has reminded us that we must remember to kneel before we dare stand.
In honor of the model of personal courage she has offered our nation, Family Research Council is pleased to bestow on Kimberly Davis the second “Cost of Discipleship” award, given in Washington, DC, this 25th day of September, in the year of our Lord, 2015.
Those are some truly lofty and uplifting words! It is unfortunate that the FRC does not yet really believe all of those words. A simple and straight-forward analysis of the text, the Bible, and history reveals the disappointing rejection of Jesus Christ as replaced with a worship of the false god of big socialist government. For these unrealized idolators, “religious liberty” means their man-made version of big socialist government versus the other man-made versions of big socialist government they oppose. Alas, they do so while blindedly oblivious to the cause and effect reality that their own idolatry of making “man-made law the source of all goodness and truth” gave birth to the new idolatry that merely copies them to the same, but which they now oppose.
For this post here, I will only address the reference that is the single truest statement in the entire text. (I will address the other issues in yet another future post.)
One very true line from the award citation jumps out and inspires us all, no doubt. To wit, “our nation has been ennobled and enriched by historic citizens who declare their unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Truer words could likely not be said in this context.
So let’s look at that statement. As the context now pertains to big government marriage control, we must first look at “rulings and statutes” that empowered the false god of big socialist government to even be involved in anti-constitutional marriage control.
As I mentioned in my previous post (“Kim Davis, Religious Liberty, and Polygamy – Part 2“), OMOWs (one man one one supporters) concocted a subterfuge in the 1800s to get around the US Constitution’s self-evident prohibition of marriage control. The “liberal activist judges” of the 1878 Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decided the Reynolds v. United States decision, setting both the wholly anti-constitutional precedent and misleading rationale for marriage control to unconstitutionally prohibit polygamy.
In all absolute fact, and to quote the FRC’s citation above, Reynolds and the anti-polygamy marriage control laws were “rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
A simple study of biology and zoology quickly reveals that polygamy is the leading form of reproductive bonding in all of Nature. In most examples throughout Nature, the females of a species choose the males. The concept of socially-imposed monogamy is mostly a man-made construct; it is a form that very, very rarely occurs in Nature.
As the citation also adds, beyond just Nature, then what about “Nature’s God?”
No matter how one might try to suggest otherwise, the above speech is the exactly, honestly, spiritually, and intellectually correct rendering of what the entire story of David does show. The reason why few know about the entire story is that few Christians have been brave enough to share it all in one context. Regardless, though, the story is what it is, and I neither added nor deleted anything from the story, as any clear reading of 1 Samuel 16 through 2 Samuel 23 of the Bible will prove.
But we do not have to stop there with only David; other great heroes were also polygamists – and they were never called sinners for it in the Bible.
The author of the Adam & Eve story as well as the “one flesh” verse of Genesis 2:24, Moses was a polygamist. So were Abraham and Jacob (aka, Israel). Indeed, anti-polygamy laws are actually anti-Semitic because they are expressly anti-Israel; the 12 tribes of Israel were born of his four wives. To support anti-polygamy is to say that the Jews are supposedly “illegitimate.” (To that, I say, God forbid.)
As if all that was still not enough to prove that anti-polygamy is anti-biblical, the four major reasons/exegeses from the Bible are explained in this speech (embedded here below) that I presented a few years ago, titled, “Bible NEVER Created One Man One Woman Doctrine.”
What we therefore see is evident. The 1878 SCOTUS decision of Reynolds v. United States and the anti-constitutional anti-polygamy laws were “rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) have been perpetually pointing this fact out to OMOWs. But OMOWs stiffneckedly turn a deaf ear and continue to willingly embrace the anti-constitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control that neither “Nature nor Nature’s God” have ever forbidden.
Yet, after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision by SCOTUS on June 26, 2015, OMOWs are suddenly giving an award to Kim Davis for supposedly “standing boldly” for “religious liberty.” If what Kim Davis did is even worthy of such an award, then my work for over 20 years of standing against anti-constitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control could be the very definition of such an award.
Yes, Obergefell and laws forcing imposed-SSM (same sex marriage) on others are simply more unconstitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control. Likewise, Reynolds and the anti-polygamy laws forcing imposed-bans of UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) are also every bit as much more unconstitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control too. Indeed, Obergefell being allowed and imposed is the fault of Reynolds being allowed and imposed.
The truth of this indisputable hypocrisy is so important to see that I will re-state it, just to make sure it is not misunderstood. OMOWs being forced to accept Obergefell and SSM marriage control have only themselves to blame. That is because OMOWs started it all when they (themselves) forced UCAPs to accept Reynolds and OMOW marriage control.
There is more to say about this in a future post.
Ultimately, OMOWs, Kim Davis, the FRC, and their big-government-idolatrous apostate “Christian” followers, really have no true insight about being persecuted for “religious liberty” in America when it comes to big government marriage control. If they really want to now believe what they say about anti-constitutional SCOTUS decisions and legalized laws, then their wannabe “integrity” would self-require them to likewise work to end the real persecution of the “religious liberties” of unrelated consenting adult polygamists (UCAPs) too. Government has no Constitutional authority to impose big government marriage control on unrelated consenting adults.
If opposing the unconstitutional SCOTUS big government marriage control ruling of Obergefell is a “religious liberty” right, then opposing the unconstitutional SCOTUS big government marriage control ruling of Reynolds is a “religious liberty” right too. In fact, the latter is even moreso.
But will one man one woman supporters (OMOWs) now really stand up for those ennobling principles? The test of proof of their “integrity” on this issue is simple. Regarding bothObergefellandReynolds, will they truly… “declare their unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God?”
If they do, the solution is easy and a “win” for everyone.
Let’s bring an end to the idolatry with the Polygamy Rights Win-Win Solution: Abolish all big government marriage control for unrelated consenting adults.
This is the second part of a series of posts pertaining to the County Clerk in Kentucky, named Kim Davis, who refused to do her $80,000 a year government job to issue marriage control licenses after the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges (June 26, 2015) legalized same sex marriage in all States.
Supporters of OMOW (one man one woman) sometimes claim that they stand for “religious liberty” – except when they don’t. To test the validity of that claim, just ask any supporter of UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) how sincerely that OMOWs supposedly “believe” in religious liberty for everyone. The doubting response will be, “Yeah, right. If only.”
If only, indeed.
When 3-time-divorced, Democrat Kim Davis was sent to jail for being “in contempt of court” for not doing her job of issuing big government marriage licenses for SSM (same sex marriage), numerous Republican, supposedly-conservative, and self-professed Christian supporters of OMOW (one man one woman) rallied to her defense. They all said that she had the “religious liberty” to not do the job for which she freely campaigned and was elected to perform. When she was sent to jail for not doing her job, her defenders considered her as a would-be heroine and martyr for “religious liberty.”
“judicial lawlessness crossed into judicial tyranny.”
Supporters of UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) quickly point out that that is what polygamists have been saying for over a century about big government marriage control of anti-polygamy laws and Supreme Court precedent. For every so-called “conservative” who believes that Kim Davis’ religious liberties were being denied, all that much more must such Kim Davis defenders now also support the religious liberties of UCAPs.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
In Reynolds v. United States, the “liberal activist judges” of that 1878 Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) determined that
A party’s religious belief cannot be accepted as a justification for his committing an overt act…
Ever since, big government supporters of the unbiblical manmade socialism of OMOW (one man one woman) have relied upon that “activist” SCOTUS decision to oppress and to deny the religious liberty of UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists). Essentially, Reynolds v. United States unconstitutionally set the precedent that, while Individuals have the right to believe in their religious systems, they supposedly have no right to practice or to act upon those beliefs.
Indeed, Reynolds set the erroneous absurdity of only a religious liberty to believe but not to practice. With that totalitarian absurdity, big government has absolutely no limit to decide what religious practices it chooses to prohibit.
To be clear, the politicians of the 1800s knew that the US Constitution prohibited all federal marriage control in the States – because of the Tenth Amendment. Constitutionally, the federal government only had jurisdictional management authority of non-State Territories because of Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the US Constitution. Knowing that, they purposely limited their anti-polygamy laws only to the Territories.
To wit, it was limited to only the Territories in every way.
1856 Republican Party plank only called for banning polygamy in the Territories.
1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act only banned polygamy in the Territories.
1878 Reynolds v. United States only re-affirmed the 1862 law banning polygamy only in the Territories.
1882 Edmunds Act only banned polygamy in the Territories.
This embedded video (of a speech I presented a few years ago) goes through the history and the texts of the law and case, revealing the intentional anti-constitutional subterfuge that the 1800s OMOWs used in order to get around the Constitutional prohibition against federal marriage control. As readers here likely would have guessed by now, it is titled, “In the Territories…”
In that era, a Mormon polygamist named George Reynolds lived in the Utah Territory – before it was a State. He was found breaking the territorial jurisdictional-management law, the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862.
Because the Utah Territory was not yet a State, because he was a resident of that non-State Territory, and because the law that his polygamy allegedly “broke” had only applied to non-State Territories, the subterfuge denied him the ability to use a Tenth Amendment defense in court to prove that such marriage control was unconstitutional.
In what can only be described as a “kangaroo court” when he was brought to trial for bigamy, Reynolds was not even allowed to have any unbiased jurors who were not hostile to polygamy. Anyone who was even remotely pro-polygamist was immediately prevented and turned away from being a juror.
So when his case reached the Supreme Court, Reynolds faced a stacked deck against him, only permitting him to make a First Amendment (“freedom of religion”) defense. But even that was not enough to overcome the actual judicial tyranny that he encountered.
When the SCOTUS ruling of Reynolds v. United States came down in 1878, it anti-constitutionally established that federal anti-polygamy laws in the Territories are supposedly “constitutional.” But not stopping in the Territories, the “liberal activist judges” (as modern conservatives would label such judicial activism) cleverly exploited the “freedom of religion” aspect of the defense to actually concoct a nationwide precedent out of both the case and law even though it did not apply to the States whatsoever.
Compounding it worse, the OMOW politicians of both that era and ever since have continued that concoction of subterfuge as if it supposedly does apply to the States – even though it does not.
Consequently, UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamy supporters) have perpetually been oppressed by the unconstitutional marriage control of the OMOWs’ anti-polygamy laws.
When UCAPs plead with OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) to remember that the “freedom of religion” clause of the First Amendment does not permit such marriage control tyranny, OMOWs respond by repeating the words from the Reynolds decision that “religious liberty” is supposedly no excuse for disobeying law. To wit, when it comes to law:
Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief?
To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.
That very assertion from the Reynolds “religious liberty” precedent has been the big government go-to response by OMOW “conservatives” in almost every discussion about the anti-constitutional tyranny of anti-polygamy marriage control.
OMOWs have transferred themselves from being the persecutors against UCAP “religious liberty” to now claiming that their own “religious liberties” are being persecuted by SSMs (same sex marriage supporters).
But what is the biggest difference between the cry for “religious liberty” from UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamy supporters) and Kim Davis? UCAPs are simply fighting for the freedom to be free of big government tyranny without affecting anyone else under the law. But Kim Davis is fighting for the freedom to use her $80,000 a year big government job to prevent other people from having what the big government she serves has allowed them to have by law.
And now SSMs respond to Kim Davis’ OMOW defenders with the same totalitarian absurdity of the Reynolds “religious liberty” assertion that OMOWs say to UCAPs! What goes around comes around, it would seem.
In a pure hypocrisy that says SCOTUS’ Reynolds decision (disallowing UCAP) is somehow constitutionally valid out of one side of their mouth, OMOWs now say that SCOTUS’ Obergefell decision (allowing SSM) is “judicial tyannny” (as Ted Cruz put it) out of the other side of their mouth. Do OMOWs believe in the authority of SCOTUS to decide anti-constitutional marriage control or not?
There is more to point out here, but I will save that for yet another post in this series. No doubt, UCAPs would welcome OMOWs’ “Damascus road conversion” to finally defending “religious liberty” and to recognizing that SCOTUS does not get it right when addressing anti-constitutional big government marriage control. Alas, OMOWs’ outright liberal worship of the false god of big socialist government causes great skepticism that a genuine conversion has occurred.
Ultimately, the sharpest clarity of this new socialist hypocrisy of big government OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) supporting Kim Davis can be most easily perceived by the following two statements.
OMOWs say to UCAPs: “Obey the law because you have no religious liberty/right to practice what you believe.”
OMOWs say to SSMs: “We will disobey the law because we have a religious liberty/right to practice what we believe.”
But OMOWs, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
In Kentucky, Rowan County clerk Kim Davis refused to issue marriage licenses for same sex marriage (SSM). To purportedly avoid legal charges of discrimination, she also refused to issue marriage licenses for anyone else too.
According to the US Census FactFinder, a search for “Rowan County, Kentucky,” reveals a population of about 23,000 in less than 9,000 households. Half the households earn less than $35,000 a year in Rowan County, Kentucky. Yet, Kim Davis – whose job is nothing more than a Clerk – lives off the backs of taxpayers with a fat-cat compensation that is more than twice that which half the taxpaying-households in her County even earn.
Kim Davis campaigned to be elected for her job as the petty functionary to enforce marriage control in Rowan County, Kentucky. To be clear: she campaign-promised to do her job, was elected to do so, and now lives off the backs of the low-income taxpayers of Rowan County, Kentucky, as she draws $80,000 a year.
In that context, this low-level Clerk does not have any authority to self-define her job. She is nothing more than a servant inside big government, with no latitude to do anything less than that which her public-sector job mandates.
Moreover, in this matter, she is not doing something that is a matter of her private life. She is not working in a private company. She is not even the owner of a company.
Rather, Kim Davis is but an employee of big government bureaucracy. Her function is to process marriage control, to expedite and issue marriage certificates as defined by the hierarchy of law.
Kim Davis asserted that performing her legally-required job would infringe her religious liberty rights, as she religiously opposes SSM and does not want her name associated with any County-archived record-keeping of same sex marriages. Rather than quit her big government job (so that she may still keep her salary, living off the taxpayers), she just refused to do her job.
Subsequently, ending up in court, a judge ordered her to fulfill her job duties, but she refused. By her own choice of refusal, the judge found her in “contempt of court,” sending her to jail until she would either agree to perform her duties as required or she would resign from the position.
Because Kim Davis still refused to do either option, the Judge found her in “contempt of court” in Miller v. Davis. She was then booked into the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky, on September 3, 2015.
She did not technically break a law (yet); rather, she was sent to jail for being “in contempt of court” for refusing to perform the duties of her big government job – as court-ordered. She always had the free choice to get out of jail at any time of her choosing when she would decide to no longer be “in contempt of court.”
On September 8, 2015, Kim Davis agreed to not prevent the deputies in her office from issuing big government marriage licenses. With that agreement, Kim Davis was freed from jail.
This whole debacle has raised the issue of religious liberty and the use of big government to impose its force against people’s free conscience. The connections – as well as hypocrisies – to the persecution of the religious liberty of UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) are many. I will address these in an upcoming post.
Ultimately, I find the last words of Senator Rand Paul at the very end of the above-embedded video to be most relevant of all. Without even knowing it directly, Senator Paul correctly acknowledged the inevitability of the Polygamy Rights Win-Win Solution that States will have to take: Abolish all government marriage control for unrelated consenting adults.
