Mitch Perry
Rick Santorum isn’t the only social conservative Republican comparing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Friday effectively legalizing same-sex marriage to the Dred Scott decision. The 1857 ruling by the high court that found that blacks were not American citizens.
“Regardless of how it appears, today’s decision is not the final word on marriage,” John Stemberger of the Florida Family Policy Council said in a prepared statement released. “The U.S. Supreme Court has been wrong before, as in the case of Dredd Scott when the court attempted to declare that black people were not persons. The court was also wrong in Roe vs. Wade when it effectively declared that unborn children were not persons. Once again, the court is wrong today in its attempt to force all 50 states and all U.S. citizens to legally declare that marriage is something other than the union of one man and one woman.”
Stemberger supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Florida in 2008, which voters by an overwhelming 62-38 percent margin supported. However, public opinion has changed dramatically in the 6 1/2 years since that vote. A poll released in February 2014 by the Public Religion Research Institutes showed that 57 percent of Floridians now support same-sex marriage.
Gay marriage was legalized on New Year’s Day this year in Florida, after federal Judge Robert Hinkle ruled that state clerk of courts offices must issue marriage licenses to all couples, gay or straight, or face legal consequences. Although she did not contest the ruling, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the U.S. Supreme Court would be the final arbiter in this case.
“The United States Supreme Court has the final word on interpreting the Constitution, and the court has spoken,” Bondi said in a prepared statement today.
The court ruled 5-4 in the gay-marriage case, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the swing-vote.
“It is demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of the nation’s society, for they too may aspire to the transcendent purposes of marriage,” Kennedy wrote in the 34-page ruling.
The Supreme Court’s decision declares that all states must recognize same-sex marriages as valid under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. It also rejects arguments that granting same-sex marriages devalues or harms the institution of traditional marriage.
Stemberger wrote in a prepared statement that the “redefinition of marriage” by the court not only affects the institution of marriage and states right, but “also represents a frontal assault on religious liberty and free speech.”
“Core First Amendment rights that Americans for centuries have bled and died for are being trampled in just a matter of years and is now beginning to occur on a regular basis,” he writes. “Our morally declining society together with judicial activism in our courts, is opening the floodgates for legal attacks and discrimination against U.S. citizens who hold those rights dear.
“Pastors and churches, Christians and those of other conservative faiths, nonprofits, grant recipients, religious schools, businesses providing wedding services, and clerks of courts will become the next targets for attack as a result of the decision today. The weapon used in these attacks are deceptively called ‘non-discrimination ordinances.’”
Stemberger says that the only response is to “double down” on efforts to “rebuild a culture of marriage.”
“We will never concede and we will never give up. Whether it takes decades or multiple generations, we will rebuild a culture of marriage. It may even get worse in the short-term before it gets better, but in order for this civil society to flourish once again, we must have a clear understanding of what marriage is and why it is important to our culture, society and social order.”
