Quote:The Supreme Court was established to answer the question of what is and isn't permitted under the Constitution of the United States. It can be overridden by Congress passing a Constitutional amendment, and the President controls who sits on it. Likewise, it has the ability to invalidate laws by declaring them as unconstitutional, and it can override Presidential actions in much the same way. It's a critical check and balance against the other two branches of government.


In this instance, the Supreme Court was presented with the question of whether laws blocking same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. The Court found that they were, invalidating the laws and establishing that under the 14th Amendment, same-sex marriage is legal and all government officials are required to authorize, license and recognize those marriages.


This clerk chose to argue in court that her religious beliefs excuse her from having to issue marriage licenses for gay couples, or to have any issued in her office with her name on them as the county clerk. That's her right to do so, but every single court she took it to found the same way: the right to freedom of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment is a personal right, not a governmental right. By accepting a government job, she is bound to uphold the laws of our nonreligious government without regard to her personal beliefs, and the right of homosexuals to be married by government (and her sworn duty to issue those marriage licenses) overrides her misgivings.


She was instructed to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and tried to sidestep it by not issuing licenses to anyone. She was told repeatedly by the courts that she had no choice but to issue the licenses or resign. She refused to do either, and after weeks of going back and forth, the plaintiffs who had been trying to get married in her courtroom asked that she be held in contempt of court and fined. The judge decided to incarcerate her instead. Not because she doesn't believe that gay marriage is right, but because she took an oath of office swearing to uphold the laws of the land--not just the ones she agreed with--and she consistently ignored that oath and the law to the point where locking her up was the only way to get her attention.


The Supreme Court didn't legislate anything here. It did what it's always done. It took the law and interpreted it through the lens of the US Constitution, ultimately coming to a decision on whether the law was reconcilable with the Constitution or not. In this case, it was. In other cases, it wasn't. It's not judicial activism to say that a certain law or set of laws is unconstitutional; it's what they're supposed to do!


Let's throw this out there: if the Supreme Court were to somehow get its hands on the Iran treaty and declare it unconstitutional, would you be complaining about judicial activism then? Because that sort of decision would be far outside the realm of what the Supreme Court is supposed to do, and far closer to judicial activism than ruling on same-sex marriage or jailing a county clerk who's spent the last two months in contempt of court.

The correct ruling would've returned this issue to the states. Marriage is not a government issue and certainly not a federal one. That the Court took the case and then struck down the laws of the vast majority of states is the encroachment I'm talking about. 9 people changed the whole country without consideration of the expressed will of the people through their representatives.


And yes, I would complain about a ruling on a treaty, we have laws that govern those.

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