


Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis is testing the claim that five unelected Supreme Justices have the authority to overrule a state constitution that she took an oath to uphold and a federal Constitution that says nothing about same-sex marriage.

Robert Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice, had this to say on the issue in a Facebook post:

“Inasmuch as SCOTUS so obviously overreached and acted as though it had the power to amend the Constitution (and certainly as legislators), Kim Davis should not comply. I disagree with my friends Maggie Gallagher, Rod Dreher, and Ryan Anderson on this one. The Obergefell decision has no more validity than the Dred Scott case (or the Fugitive Slave Law) had in Lincoln’s day. Civil disobedience is commendable. The only problem with Kim Davis’s position (aside from the fact that she would better ground her rationale in the illegitimate action of the Five Lawless Justices than in religious liberty; h.t. Brian Troyer) is that mass resistance has not occurred on the part of Christians.”

The states have rolled over on the question of judicial supremacy, and Congress is too busy solidifying its power base to take on a nation-dividing fundamental issue. Governors don’t want to make waves and get involved in a protracted legal battle with the Federal government that has unlimited money to spend and ways to hold back federal funding (money it took from the states in taxes). Wouldn’t it be great if a dozen or so states banded together and said no to the usurpation of their states’ authority?


As I’ve been reminded several times, since the Constitution is the “supreme Law of the land,” the Tenth Amendment is part of the Constitution:


The power to regulate marriage was not delegated to the United States by the Constitution.

But back to the constitutional question about the Supreme Court being the final authority. Here’s what Thomas Jefferson had to say on the issue in a letter to William Charles Jarvis (28 September 1820).

I chose Jefferson because he is a liberal and neo-conservative icon.



Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem” [it is the part of a good judge to enlarge his jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control.






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