Alabama’s Full Faith and Credit in Law, not Obergefell

by / on March 9, 2016 at 6:36 am /
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homosexuality_marriage_ObergefellFaced with the impossibility of consummating and thereby conceiving children, two women living as a couple in Alabama set up a second residence in Georgia where lesbians are allowed to adopt children.  These children were conceived in one of the lesbians by insemination from an anonymous male donor.

Later in 2011, the two women split up, and the non-parent lesbian (V.L.) sued in an Alabama state court, accusing biological lesbian mother (E.L.) of denying her access to the children, one now 13 and 11-year-old twins.

The case made its way to the Alabama Supreme Court, which refused legal standing for V.L.  The U.S. Supreme Court then issued a 6-2 ruling, to summarily overturn the Alabama order.

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While the press and V.L. are making the argument this recent case is about a rejection of the full faith and credit clause, it is not!  This goes back to the SCOTUS opinion of Obergefell not being based on legal reasoning, history, tradition, the Court’s own rules, or the rule of law, but upon the empathetic feelings of the “five lawyers” in the majority.

As Americans we find ourselves in another philosophical conundrum with many people believing the courts have already determined the definition of marriage.  Well if they are talking about earthly courts, they are grossly misled.

Here is the definition of marriage given by our Creator incarnate, Jesus Christ, as recorded in the 19th chapter of Matthew:

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“Have you not read that He Who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’”

The jurisdiction over this sacred institution is the family and the Church.  Government’s duty is to recognize and defend the institution of marriage.

For just a minute, think about the pretension that it takes for mere human beings to think that they have the authority or ability to change what is eternal and forever fixed by the Creator.  To attempt such a foolish and vain thing is to do nothing less than to make the claim that you are God.

Random courts, legislatures and governors all over America have already done exactly this.

Chief Justice Roberts put the court’s self-aggrandizing claim of power in historical context: “Those who founded our country would not recognize the majority’s conception of the judicial role. They, after all, risked their lives and fortunes for the precious right to govern themselves. They would never have imagined yielding that right on a question of social policy to unaccountable and unelected judges.”

I am reminded of a prophetic warning given by Paul, an original apostle of the Christian Church:

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own lusts, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and shall be turned aside to fables.”

Fables.

The notion that a court can change the sin of sodomy into a substitute for marriage is a dangerous, destructive fable.

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Jake MacAulay serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the Institute on the Constitution (IOTC), an educational outreach that presents the founders’ “American View” of law and government. The former co-host of the syndicated talk show, The Sons of Liberty, he is an ordained minister and has spoken to audiences nation-wide, and has established the American Club, a constitutional study group in public and private schools.
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  • DCM7

    Once again, it’s 100% about what the (so-called) adults want, and 0% about what children actually need.

    “Gay marriage” apologists often use the old line of “look at how heterosexuals have messed up marriage,” not realizing that the position it slams is their own. Marriage has already been messed up enough without “gay marriage” messing it up further.

  • Thisoldspouse

    Designer children are commodities in today’s brave new world.

  • Jess Mee

    Obergefell has nothing to do with this. The bottom line is that an Alabama court has no business deciding that a Georgia court did not correctly interpret and apply Georgia law in the case. That’s not their call to make, they have no place telling another state how to apply their own laws.

    • It is true that Alabama can’t adjudicate Georgia law because Alabama has no jurisdiction in Georgia.

      Alabama does, however, have jurisdiction in Alabama, and that is where the homosexuals filed their case.

      Similarly, the federal government has no jurisdiction over marriage in either Alabama or Georgia, which makes the Obergefell opinion just that: an opinion, with no weight or force of law. Check the enumerated powers of Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. You will find no authority over marriage granted to the federal government. You will not find authority over marriage anywhere else in the U.S. Constitution either.

      In other words, federal despots with no constitutional authority have no place telling a state how to apply their own laws.

      • Jess Mee

        Fact check: The Supreme Court’s ruling was UNANIMOUS, not 6-2. How did that happen, if the ruling was related to Obergefell? Given the dissents of Roberts, Alito and Thomas in that case, I would think that they would have voted the opposite way, if their intent was to prevent judicial tyranny.

        • You’re right. The opinion (which is all it was: opinion, without the force of law) was issued per curiam , or “an opinion issued in the name of the court unanimously” without the names of the individual justices being involved. I saw it reported in the news as a 6-2 decision, which is perhaps where the author of this article picked that up, but that report appears to be in error.

          A more important fact, check, however, and it’s one that I pointed out earlier: the federal government has no jurisdiction over marriage in either Alabama or Georgia, which makes the Obergefell opinion just that: an opinion, with no weight or force of law. Check the enumerated powers of Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. You will find no authority over marriage granted to the federal government. You will not find authority over marriage anywhere else in the U.S. Constitution either.

          In other words, federal despots with no constitutional authority have no place telling a state how to apply their own laws.

          Lawlessness is unacceptable by any and all governmental bodies in the United States.

          • Jess Mee

            The case had nothing to do with marriage. The parties were not married anywhere.

            • It has everything to do with marriage.

              As thousands of years of experience teach us (as if our Creator’s instructions didn’t), marriage is the best and really only adequate environment in which to raise healthy children. Indeed, biology and science teach us that it takes a man and a woman to create a child in the first place, and then it naturally and logically follows that the best place to raise that child is with the mother and father who created it. NOT in an environment that deliberately robs the child of either a mother or a father.

              And as the author illustrates, the judicial opinion in this case is another example of a rogue court meddling, based on feelings rather than fact or responsibility, where it has no authority:

              While the press and V.L. are making the argument this recent case is about a rejection of the full faith and credit clause, it is not! This goes back to the SCOTUS opinion of Obergefell not being based on legal reasoning, history, tradition, the Court’s own rules, or the rule of law, but upon the empathetic feelings of the “five lawyers” in the majority.

              • Jess Mee

                If I had a reach like that, I wouldn’t need a remote for my TV; I could just change the channel from across the room.

              • “Reach” is specifically what the rogue Supreme Court tried when it attempted to manufacture jurisdiction and authority out of thin air. Again, check the U.S. Constitution for yourself. You will find no authority for federal action with regard to marriage or any other family matters there.