November 22nd, 2015 by Mark Henkel
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.
OUTLINE
- Pope Francis: “Religious Liberty” is a human right
- Liberty Counsel & Vatican confirm: Pope met with Kim Davis
- Irony of newly-evolved Catholic position on “Religious Liberty”
- Justice Kennedy: Kim Davis could have chosen to resign
- OMOWs Whine, Weep, and Wail
- Irony of OMOWs’ newly-evolved position on “Religious Liberty”
- OMOWs misunderstand the Constitution backwards
- What does this newly-evolved “Religious Liberty” mean?
- An Easier Solution – For the sake of “Religious Liberty”
Pope Francis: “Religious Liberty” is a human right
On Monday, September 28, 2015, REUTERS reported
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.
As the BUZZFEED reported the same day,
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
Why were these quotes being made? During his visit to the United States, Pope Francis had a private meeting 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.
That same day, the Catholic magazine Inside the Vatican reported the specifics.
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.
Also present was Kim’s husband, Joe Davis.
Kim and her husband had come to Washington for another purpose — Kim was to receive a “Cost of Discipleship” award on Friday, September 25, from The Family Research Council at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.
Explaining why the Pope had met with Kim Davis, that same Catholic magazine Inside the Vatican also reported
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?
On Wednesday, October 28, 2015, International Business Times reported the following.
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.
SFGate.com reported how one OMOW whined:
“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.
And as ChristianToday.com reported, Senator and GOP Presidential Candidate Ted Cruz outright wailed.
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.
But now in the matter of Kim Davis, suddenly those same OMOWs seem to have experienced a “religious conversion” to the extent of Paul on the road to Damascus!
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,
OMOWs, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
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.
Posted in Articles Tagged with: Kentucky, Kim Davis, Liberty Counsel, Obergefell, Pope Francis, religious liberty, Reynolds, Supreme Court