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Kim Davis, a courthouse clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky, got the memo but ignored it.
In January 2015, the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell v. Hodges, legalizing same-sex marriage under the 14th Amendment.
We wrote about it here in this Faith and Freedom Daily column. And I talked about it on our daily radio program, "Straight Talk."
Well.
Davis, a Christian, was jailed for six days later that year after refusing to provide a marriage license for a same-sex couple.
Now Davis and Obergefell are back in the news.
Be informed, not misled.
ABC News is reporting that "Kim Davis appears to be one of the only Americans with legal standing to challenge the aforementioned precedent. Her attorney said that she is the first person in the history of the United States to be jailed because of her religious convictions."
“It's certainly a case, and it's the first one in which a plaintiff has requested a specific release. Davis has standing. She's been harmed by the decision,” attorney Mike Donnelly said on American Family Radio’s Jenna Ellis in the Morning this week.
American Family News said this:
Donnelly says that standing is an issue because who else could bring a case like this?
While Donnelly believes Davis has a good argument, he says she will have to argue that everybody else was harmed by what the Supreme Court did, and while he believes that’s true, that is not a theory of standing that the court is going to entertain.
Mat Staver from Liberty Counsel also agrees that Davis has standing.
“These plaintiffs want to punish and persecute Kim Davis solely because of her religious beliefs. That's exactly what the dissenters in Obergefell predicted would happen, people of faith and religious values and conscience would be the target of persecution,” says Staver.
In a recent X post Donnelly stated, “Dobbs: Let the people decide. Obergefell: People don’t get to decide. SCOTUS: Should we decide?”
Donnelly told Ellis that the Supreme Court is going to have to choose if the people should decide. He thinks they should, but he questions whether the decision will be overturned.
“Ten years is a very short time for the Supreme Court to consider a case and then actually overturn it. But the court seems to be open to doing those kinds of things,” states Donnelly.
The big question is, will the Supreme take this case, and if so, will they support traditional marriage?
The current Supreme Court is very different than the Court of 2015.
This Court would have never OK’d same-sex marriage, according to Donnelly.
“If this current court were ruling on Obergefell", he says, it would be a clear 6-3 decision the other way … Kavanaugh replaced (Anthony) Kennedy, who wrote the Obergefell's decision. He’s far more conservative than Kennedy, and (Amy Coney) Barrett replaced (Ruth Bader) Ginsburg, which was a complete flip. So, a totally different result."
Four Supreme Court Justices must vote to hear the case before it's put on the court's docket, but Staver says "it's not as much of a longshot as one might think."
“Obergefell is on weak ground. It has been from the very moment it was given. In the Chief Justice's words, 'five lawyers impose their own will, not a legal judgment.’ We've seen it also mentioned in the 2022 Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v Wade. Justice Thomas said then that Obergefell was one of the other cases that needed to be reconsidered and overturned,” Staver said.
Will the Supreme Court revisit the precedent?
Donnelly says, "The question lies on whether the Supreme Court will revisit the precedent in such a short period of time."
The Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion, stood for almost 50 years.
Obergefell’s future could very well be sealed by whether the Court decides to hear the case. Donnelly believes that if they choose to hear the case, then they will overturn it.
“Thirty-one states had passed constitutional amendments to their constitution, defining marriage as what it is, union of a man and a woman. And Justice Kennedy, by a 5-4 decision, one vote on the Supreme Court, swept away the votes of tens of millions of Americans at the state level.”
For now, Donnelly says that the Court is reevaluating its jurisprudence, especially the substantive due process jurisprudence that conjured Obergefell.
“If the states want to recognize a civil union or something of that nature, they have the authority to do that, but the federal Constitution does not talk about marriage. It does not give any of the branches of government, frankly, much authority,” Donnelly states.
He says that the Left wants the federal government to dictate things because they want to centralize power and control what people think. However, some believe in federalism.
The Bible and marriage.
“The Bible is God's word, and it gives us a blueprint to follow and defines marriage very clearly. We have an opportunity here, and the Court will have an opportunity here to decide whether it's on federalism grounds, religious beliefs – all of those things are in play. All the justices in the Supreme Court are human, and you can't just take that out of the equation.”
How about the children?
Donnelly says, "That children are involved in the same-sex marriage argument because it’s a public policy argument."
He says, “Marriage is for children, in part, and that's what the Bible teaches as well. Marriage is about creating a family so that parents who have children raise them to know, serve, love, and worship God. That's the purpose of a family."
However, he says that the Left wants to tear that definition of family down to cater to and validate people’s feelings.
Takeaway
I agree with most of what Donnelly says.
However, while I believe in Federalism, if marriage is declared to be only between one man and one woman, it eliminates Donnelly's concerns about a marriage license being given to three people or people wanting to marry their pet, or even to marry a building, as one woman in Seattle wanted to do a few years ago.
Another concern: if marriage is not identified as a union between one man and one woman in federal law, abortion will continue as it has been, except it will be available only in the Blue, or Democrat run states. If this happens, we will see tour buses and flights coming into these "abortion states", Planned Parenthood, and other abortion shops will relocate to these states, and abortion will continue pretty much as it has been. An industry will grow up around the abortion business in each Democratic state.
What about Kim Davis?
We'll see. Pray about this, it's a big deal.
God Himself created the institution of marriage between one man and one woman for the sustaining and well-being of the human race. Whether the Supreme Court chooses to hear this case or not will decide, I believe, whether we as a nation will further align ourselves with God's purposes or turn from His purposes and align ourselves with the world's deadly agenda.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Prayerful.
