In an interview with Iowa-based conservative talk radio host Steve Deace on Friday, Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver said that he supported Sen. Ted Cruz’s bill to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over marriage cases, but added that he also doesn’t think it’s a “state right” to rule on the issue.
“Same-sex marriage is not a state right, any more than it a right of the United States Supreme Court or the federal courts to do this,” he said. “It’s no more a states’ rights issue than is changing the natural created order of anything.”
“For example,” he continued, “slavery is not a states’ rights issue…No, the issue of slavery is something that transcends state borders. I don’t all the sudden become confused about male and female when I drive into California from a neighboring state of Texas. It’s the same in California as it is in Texas, as it is in New York, as it is in Iowa, everywhere around the world has been the same. It is not the right of the state, any more than it is the right of the federal courts or the Supreme Court to redefine the natural created order of marriage.”
Staver told Deace that “there’s a lot of remedies” Congress can pursue to “rein this out-of-control judiciary back to its intended purpose,” including dissolving lower federal courts that rule in ways lawmakers dislike on marriage and impeaching Supreme Court justices who “go off the farm” on the issue.
“There’s only one court that’s ever required by the United States Constitution,” Staver explained, “the Supreme Court of the United States. No other lower federal courts of appeals or district courts are required, they’re at the will of Congress. Congress created them, Congress can do away with them.”
“Congress, as this particular piece of legislation is proposing, can limit their jurisdiction,” he continued.
“Congress can also impeach justices of the United States Supreme Court that go off the farm. They should exercise the right of impeachment when these justices or judges become legislators, activists, ideologues rather than umpires calling the shots as the balls and strikes goes over the plate. When they do that, they need to exercise their authority to impeach.”
“When the people lose trust in the courts, the courts lose their authority,” he added. “Congress can simply resist these unjust laws coming from these courts and reign this out-of-control judiciary back in its intended position.”
