Will This 'Rebel' State Defy the U.S. Supreme Court?

The South Carolina legislature passed a law in 1996 affirming marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Ten years later, 76 percent of the voters consented to amend the state’s constitution affirming the same. A federal court ruled the law unconstitutional in 2014.

Then came the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which declared homosexual “marriage” a constitutional right. But lawmakers are still fighting to uphold the people’s will, common sense, and decency.

Rep. Bill Chumley and Rep. Mike Burns filed a bill known as the South Carolina Natural Marriage Defense Act, which would reiterate state law on the issue and require the state’s attorney general to defend lawsuits against it.

“Their lifestyle or what they do is their call,” Rep. Chumley said. “This is not against gay people. This is saying that South Carolina should not sanction or ordain something we believe is wrong. I represent the people, and the people have shown several times that they are opposed to this, and are in favor of traditional marriage.”

The bill states that Obergefell has “no basis in American law or history, purporting to overturn natural marriage and find a ‘right’ to same-sex ‘marriage’ in the United States Constitution and the fourteenth amendment and is ‘an act of will, not legal judgment,’ and the ‘right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or [the] Court’s precedent’ (Roberts, C.J., dissenting)…”

Photo credit: Elvert Barnes (Creative Commons) – Some Rights Reserved