Michael Farris, the chancellor of Patrick Henry College and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, told Iowa talk radio host Jan Mickelson yesterday that with its ruling striking down bans on gay marriage, the Supreme Court threw out “the entire institution of our courts and our judiciary and respect for the law” in pursuit of a “rainbow utopia.”
Repeating the Religious Right line that Justices Ruth Bader Kingsburg and Elena Kagan should have recused themselves from the case because they have officiated legal same-sex marriages, Farris suggested setting up a “tribunal” to review recusal motions for Supreme Court justices. If such a body existed, Farris insisted, the marriage decision “would have gone 4-3 in the other direction.”
As it is, he said, the Supreme Court just threw the entire institution of the courts out the window: “I have a hard time imagining myself standing before the Supreme Court and saying ‘your honor’ or ‘Justice.’ They’re politicians in black robes, they’re acting as a legislature. And the entire institution of our courts and our judiciary and respect for the law all have been thrown away by the Supreme Court of the United States in pursuit of this rainbow utopia. It’s crazy.”
Farris also discussed ways for churches to avoid public accommodation laws that prohibit businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, implying that churches will be forced to perform weddings for gay or lesbian couples. (In reality, churches are not forced to perform marriages they disagree with.)
“If a church gets attacked legally on this basis, they should fight, they should defend,” he said, adding that “it’s far, far better to be in trouble with a gay rights group in court than it is to be in trouble with Almighty God for participating in evil.”
