Nov. 7, 2015

Officials in a several counties in Tennessee are lining up to tell the U.S. Supreme Court to take a hike.

Well, not actually in those words.

But the court’s summer decision that created “same-sex marriage” is in the bull’s-eye in new resolutions adopted by at least three counties.

In Johnson County, officials voted “to affirm and go on record that Johnson County is vehemently opposed to the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell et al v. Hodges and supports the decision of any elected/appointed official challenging that unconstitutional decision.”

In Greene County officials adopted a very similar statement that pointed out that “since this country’s founding [states] have regulated and defined marriage without interference from the federal government or its courts.”

In McMinn County, officials pointed out the text of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution “reserves all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government to the people and the states.”

The votes weren’t close. Johnson County’s was approved 15-0. McMinn’s was 10-0 and in Greene, it was 17-2.

It’s all part of a move WND has reported of local officials, groups and individuals stating bluntly that the marriage decision is illegitimate.

WND reported just weeks ago when dozens of top legal scholars from the likes of Washington & Lee, Boston College, Kansas State, Notre Dame, University of Texas, Villanova, Vanderbilt, Hillsdale, University of Nebraska, Catholic University and Regent University issued a statement encouraging all state and federal officials to treat the Supreme Court’s recent creation of “same-sex marriage” as “anti-constitutional and illegitimate.”

“It cannot … be taken to have settled the law of the United States,” said the statement by the American Principles Project.

“We call on all federal and state officeholders: To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case. To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions. To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons. To open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evidence in Obergefell.”

Robert George, founder of the project and the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton, said: “We stand with James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in recognizing that the Constitution is not whatever a majority of Supreme Court justices say it is. We remind all officeholders in the United States that they are pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the will of five members of the Supreme Court.”

Curious about who’s responsible for the sabotage of the American family? Get “Takedown,” by Paul Kengor, for the details.

They emphasize that what they want is not extreme. Nor is it, they write, “disrespectful of the rule of law.”

They quote from Lincoln’s first inaugural address, in which he explained that depending solely on the Supreme Court as a final arbiter would mean that “people will have ceased to be their own rulers.”

In the marriage case, the lawyers explain, the five justices who joined to create same-sex marriage, “by their own admission, can find no warrant for their ruling in the text, logic, structure or original understanding of the Constitution.”

The lawyers wrote that the majority “supplied no compelling reasoning to show why it is unjustified for the laws of the states to sustain marriage as it has been understood for millennia as the union of husband and wife.”

They noted the four justices who dissented didn’t simply disagree, they feared the damage the majority was doing.

For example, Justice Antonin Scalia called it “a naked judicial claim to legislative … power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”

Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that it is “beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among … rights” rooted in the nation’s history and tradition.

The lawyers warned that the consequences would include being denied the right to “hold out as normative, and particularly desirable, the only type of human relationship that every society must cultivate for its perpetuation.”

Further, those supporting traditional marriage could be “vilified, legally targeted, and denied constitutional rights.”

And additional redefinitions would come more easily and democracy would be undermined.

But “anti-constitutional and illegitimate”?

“Obergefell should be declared to be such, and treated as such, by the other branches of government and by citizens,” the statement says.

WND reported after the Obergefell decision was released that Liberty Counsel, in a brief on behalf of several family groups, explained to the Alabama judges there is precedent in the U.S. for a state Supreme Court to reject a “U.S. Supreme Court mandate which is unlawful.”

“There is existing precedent for a state’s highest court to reject an unlawful mandate from the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman, Mat Staver. “The hope of our constitutional Republic rests upon state officials and American citizens who will refuse to allow five, black-robed judges to rob us of our free, representative form of government.

“A judicial opinion without constitutional basis is not law and should not be followed by any state or citizen,” he said.

The brief submitted by Liberty Counsel to the state court notes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to follow the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Dred Scott, which “said that blacks were not entitled to full protection as citizens.”

In the Wisconsin case, the brief explains that even though the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the state Supreme Court, “in a final act of defiance,” the state court “never filed the mandates” which required people to return “fugitive slaves” to their owners.

At that time, the Wisconsin court opined, “I believe most sincerely and solemnly that the last hope of free, representative and responsible government rests upon the state sovereignties and fidelity of state officers to their double allegiance, to the state and federal government; and so believe, I cannot hesitate in performing a clear, an indispensable duty.”

The court also declared the federal law unconstitutional.

The Wisconsin court said, “Here is a distinct recognition of the power and duty of state judges, not to be bound by all the acts of Congress, or by the judgments and decrees of the supreme federal court, or by their interpretation of the constitution and acts of congress, but by ‘this constitution’ ‘and the laws made in pursuance thereof.’”

Simply put, they found, a Supreme Court opinion that wasn’t founded in the Constitution was not a judgment.

The McMinn County resolution points out the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention marriage and the Supreme Court has held that when the Constitution was adopted, states “possessed full power over the subject of marriage and divorce.”

The current court, only two years ago, ruled specifically that was the case.

“It is the belief of the McMinn County Commission that the United States Supreme Court and many of the lower federal courts have by virtue of their decisions increasingly encroached on the rights of the states.”

It continued, “This body, duly elected to represent the citizens of McMinn County, requests the Tennessee Legislature and governor to take the legal and appropriate action as prescribed in Article V of the United States Constitutino to petition the United States Congrss to return those powers not expressly delegated to the United States by the Consttiution to the states and the people.”

The other resolutions were similar.

In another county, a resolution still is pending.

A commissioner in Blount County, Tennessee, introduced a resolution condemning the marriage decision and asking that Almighty God spare her county when judgment lands on America because of it.

A lawyer in the state, Jeff Cobble of the Cobble Law Firm, told WND on Thursday that there are hundreds and possibly thousands, of residents in his state already taking up the discussion of how to nullify the decision.

Cobble explained to WND that he’s discussed the issue with dozens of lawmakers, a multitude of local officials and state residents by the thousand through email chains and other social media.

Blount Commissioner Karen Miller is sponsoring a resolution asking the Almighty to “pass us by in His coming wrath and not destroy our county as he did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities.”

Other commissioners have resorted to tricks to keep the item from coming up for discussion, but she’s determined to keep introducing it until the people have an opportunity to act.

The plan from Miller states, “We adopt this resolution before God that he pass us by in His coming wrath and not destroy our county as He did Sodom and Gomorrah.”

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