As federal courts legalized same-sex marriage in several new states this week, Matt Barber unsurprisingly railed against the trend in an appearance on “The Janet Mefferd Show” yesterday. Barber insisted that judges shouldn’t be making decisions regarding state marriage laws, before adding that even state legislatures don’t “have the right” to pass marriage equality laws.
“This doesn’t even belong in the courts,” he told Mefferd. “Marriage is what marriage is, you can no more redefine marriage than you can suspend the laws of gravity. They can say they’re going to do it but it doesn’t alter reality, so the fact is this matter doesn’t belong in the courts. States don’t even have the right to redefine marriage, it’s like saying I want to redefine purple.”
“Gay marriage and religious freedom cannot coexist in harmony,” Barber predicted. “We are going to see more and more anti-Christian persecution and discrimination at levels we could not have imagined. People are starting to see that this is really about attacking Christians and Christianity more so than it’s about this euphemistic ‘marriage equality’ nonsense that they’re throwing out there.”
While Barber doesn’t believe that state legislatures can pass marriage equality laws, he does think governors should simply refuse to follow court rulings they disagree with and resist “San Francisco-style social experimentation.”
I’d love to see a Gov. Rick Perry or a Gov. Mary Fallin say to these federal courts of appeals: ‘Excuse me, get the heck out of Oklahoma, get out of Texas. We the people have voted, this is our state constitution, Baker v. Nelson is clear, the Supreme Court has already spoken on this issue, there is no constitutional right. Thank you for your opinion, but that’s all it is, it is an opinion, and we are going to go ahead and reject that opinion and we are going to go ahead and maintain our constitution and the natural, age-old, millennia-old definition of marriage as between man and woman, we are not going to get into this San Francisco-style social experimentation in Oklahoma and Texas, thank you very much.’ I would love to see somebody with the courage to do that.
