Is same-sex marriage about to get the Dobbs treatment?



Could Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage, face Roe v. Wade's fate?

Last month, Idaho lawmakers overwhelmingly passed House Joint Memorial 1, which declares that the Idaho legislature rejects the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell and formally asks the Supreme Court to "restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman."

The memorial accuses the Supreme Court of adopting a definition of "liberty" that the framers of the Constitution "would not have recognized." Whereas the framers declared in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," the memorial accuses the Supreme Court of declaring in Obergefell that "citizens must seek dignity from the state." The memorial, moreover, accuses the Supreme Court of treating the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment "as a font of substantive rights," therefore "exalt[ing] judges at the expense of the people from whom they derive their authority."

Ultimately, the memorial demands the issue of marriage be returned to the "several states and the people."

What is most interesting about the memorial is that it was crafted to mirror the language of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The question seems not to be if the Supreme Court will hear a direct challenge to Obergefell — but when.

Case in point: In his forceful Obergefell dissent, Thomas condemned the "dangerous fiction of treating the Due Process Clause as a font of substantive rights" while warning that when strayed from the Constitution, "substantive due process exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority."

Thomas resurrected his argument seven years later when he wrote a concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the landmark Supreme Court case that overturned Roe.

In light of the Dobbs ruling that abortion is not a form of "liberty" protected by substantive due process rights because it is neither "deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition" nor "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," Thomas argued that "all of this Court's substantive due process precedents" must be reconsidered, specifically highlighting Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell.

"Substantive due process ... has harmed our country in many ways," Thomas argued. "Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity."

That opportunity may come sooner than later.

While the Idaho memorial does not carry the force and effect of law, according to the Idaho Capitol Sun, it is a shot across the bow that signals a growing willingness to challenge Obergefell and the jurisprudence on which it stands.

The Supreme Court, however, will not revisit the legal question of same-sex marriage until it receives a direct challenge to the Obergefell precedent.

But it is not hard to imagine such a challenge emerging in the near future.

While the Obergefell decision legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states, more than 30 states still have state constitutional amendments or statutes banning same-sex marriage. Democrats, concerned about a potential Obergefell reversal, warn that more than 200 million Americans live in states where same-sex marriage would become illegal if Obergefell falls.

Not only is there a legitimate argument that marriage is an issue of state's rights, but Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito have written on the consequences of the Obergefell decision for Christians.

After the Supreme Court chose not to hear a case involving Kim Davis — the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses because of her Christian faith — Thomas and Alito described Davis as "one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision" and warned that "she will not be the last."

"Due to Obergefell, those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other anti-discrimination laws," the duo wrote in 2020.

"It would be one thing if recognition for same-sex marriage had been debated and adopted through the democratic process, with the people deciding not to provide statutory protections for religious liberty under state law," they explained. "But it is quite another when the Court forces that choice upon society through its creation of atextual constitutional rights and its ungenerous interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause, leaving those with religious objections in the lurch."

In their eyes, the Supreme Court chose to "privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment" in Obergefell through "undemocratic" means.

The only remedy, according to Thomas and Alito, is future intervention from the Supreme Court.

Still, there are significant differences between abortion and same-sex marriage that would make overturning Obergefell insurmountable.

For example, support for same-sex marriage remains statistically high: About 70% of Americans support it, according to Gallup. Abortion never enjoyed such widespread support. Even more important is that reversing Obergefell would raise the complex legal question of what to do with existing same-sex marriages. Would they be invalidated? Grandfathered in?

Only the Supreme Court's nine justices can answer that question. But if Dobbs proved anything, it's that the Supreme Court is willing to overturn long-standing precedents to correct legal transgressions.

With growing cultural and political backlash against woke ideology, the question seems not to be if the Supreme Court will hear a direct challenge to Obergefell — but when.

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Allie Beth Stuckey slams Ted Cruz for calling IVF treatment a 'right’



Republicans have announced a new bill that declares in vitro fertilization a right, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is leading the charge alongside Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.).

“We came together, and said let’s draft a simple, straightforward, federal bill that creates a federal right that you as a parent have a right to have access to IVF,” Cruz said.

“If you want to have a child and you need medical assistance to do so, that should be your right,” he concluded.

"A right to IVF," Allie Beth Stuckey mimics in clear disagreement.

Associate professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Andrew T. Walker is also extremely disappointed.

“I was really discouraged with this legislation coming out from two senators,” Walker tells Stuckey. “This is obviously coming in the aftermath of the Alabama Supreme Court decision from earlier in the year, but I think tragically, they’re going further out in support of a practice that, tragically, most Americans are just woefully misinformed about when it comes to what IVF is.”

“It’s an affront to human dignity, in the service of so-called support for human dignity,” he adds.

Stuckey is in firm agreement.

“Yes, we like to say that when technology takes us from what is natural to what is possible, Christians have the responsibility to ask, ‘But is this moral?’ And more important, ‘Is this biblical?’” Stuckey says.

“Catholic teaching takes issue with removing or with separating reproduction from sex, which I think is good, and I think is fair. Because when you make that separation, all kinds of ethical issues flow from that,” she adds.

Not only is the process unnatural, but it isn’t consistent with the beliefs of those who claim to be pro-life.

“If life starts at conception, then how we treat embryos matters. IVF very often includes a eugenics process of selecting the best embryos and discarding the others,” Stuckey explains, adding, “If life begins at conception, then how can we say that we have a right to IVF when inherent in IVF is the mistreatment of these little human beings made in God’s image?”


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Levin: Unraveling America's legal beginnings



Despite what the reprobates and historical illiterates on the left will have you think, our founding fathers drew on the philosophy that our inalienable rights derive from natural law — God.

But it’s not always out of malice.

Rather, it’s mostly because “they’re not very bright,” Mark Levin says, noting that the media is one of the worst offenders.

“The media in this country, they abuse their authority. They lie and they try and preach the radical left agenda,” Levin says.

And a reporter on MSNBC is proving Levin right.

“There’s many different groups orbiting Trump, but the thing that reunites them as Christian nationalists, not Christians by the way, because Christian nationalist is very different, is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority, they don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God,” the Politico reporter said.

“Obviously, she doesn’t know a damn thing about American history,” Levin says.

At the time that the country was founded, John Locke was the most important philosopher. He spoke at length about free will, the individual, unalienable rights, natural rights, and natural law — just like the great Aristotle.

“He talked about natural law, which is a universal law,” Levin explains. “In other words, murder is wrong, whether a man passes a law or not.”

“Morality does not come from man; morality comes from a higher authority,” he adds.

This is what our country was founded on because our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

“That’s the modern-day Democrat Party, that man gives us rights and privileges and we need the right man,” Levin says, adding that “it’s a very dangerous ideology, and it’s preposterous.”


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Levin: THIS is how Democrats are getting around the Constitution



The best way to try to prevent tyranny is to divide the power.

That’s why judicial, legislative, and executive each have their own branches within the United States government.

And as Mark Levin says, “That’s why the delineation of the authority as best as they could under each one of those branches is spelled out in the most fabulous governing document in the history of man: the United States Constitution.”

“Everything I just told you was rejected by the Democrat Party,” Levin says.

“If you’re trying to put together an autocratic centralized regime, you’ve got to get around the Constitution. And today, you’ve got to get around the Constitution if you want to implement the Marxist agenda,” he adds.

According to Levin, Joe Biden himself repeats Marxist phrases.

“Joe Biden is a very stupid and sick man, but he knows how to repeat phrases. When he says, ‘Bottom up and middle out,’ what he’s trying to say is ‘I want you to follow bottom up and middle out, but we’re not really about bottom up and middle out,’” Levin explains.

Marx did not use the same phrasing, but he did talk about the same thing.

“Marx talked about bottom up and middle out without using those phrases. It was called the proletariat that was going to overthrow the management and executive class, as he would call it,” Levin adds.

When you look at the Democrat Party through the same lens as dictators and philosophers past, it all starts to make sense.

“They’re repulsive, they’re unconscionable,” Levin says. “The Democrat Party projects onto the Republican Party everything it’s done to this country. From racism to anti-Semitism to economic dislocation and on and on and on.”

Levin believes the only thing standing in the way of their all-out takeover is the Constitution.

“The Democrat Party hates the country. It’s trying to destroy our constitutional system,” he says. “It’s all about power.”


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