Utah Man Says He Will Not Eat Until Gay Marriages Stop (VIDEO)

Trestan
Candidate photo Via Project Vote Smart

In “Are you kidding me news”, 35 year old,?Trestin Meacham is allegedly on a hunger strike until the state stops honoring it’s recent decision to allow gay marriage in the state?according to Huffington Post.

I cannot stand by and do nothing while this evil takes root in my home,” ?Meacham ?reportedly wrote on his blog. “Some things in life are worth sacrificing one’s health and even life if necessary. I am but a man, and do not have the money and power to make any noticeable influence in our corrupt system. Nevertheless, I can do something that people in power cannot ignore.

Meacham says he will not eat until Utah decides to nullify the federal court’s decision. Nullification is the legal theory that states have the right to invalidate any federal law that they deem unconstitutional.

Jefferson made clear that the courts are not the supreme arbitrators of what is and what is not constitutional. The states also have power, Meacham said.

Perhaps Meacham hasn’t studied history very well, but this theory has never really worked out for those trying to use it. He need only look to the states that tried to use nullification in order to preserve school segregation. I live in Mississippi, and I assure you Jim Crow is no more. ?Former Mississippi Governor William Winters said in regards to his state digging in it’s heels and holding on to the theory of state’s rights, nullification, and segregation

We learned some very harsh lessons we learned in the first place we were on the wrong side. ?There were those who told us that if we just stick together that if the white people of Mississippi just stick together there was no force on earth that could change this system of segregation.

Wise words.

According to attorney Greg Skordas in a television?interview by 4Utah, nullification does not apply in the case of same-sex marriage in Utah.

If people want to change that they have to go through the appropriate processes,

he stated,

When individual personal liberties are at stake the state can’t infringe on that, even if it’s the will of the people.

Hunger strikes are traditionally a tool the oppressed use to peacefully confront the oppression of their oppressor. Nothing shows that heterosexual white males within ?the religious right?now see themselves as the truly oppressed in this country more than Meacham using a hunger strike as a way to deny other people their rights, rather than gain rights for anyone.

He says he has lost 25 pounds so far and had this message for the state

They don’t have to go through the legal court battles and waste our money, they can end it tomorrow with the act of nullification, he said.

That’s why some things are called “rights” and not options. Gay marriage does not threaten Meacham’s rights or the rights of anyone who is married to someone of the opposite sex.

I have these words for Meacham and others like him, it is a quote from ?Ellie Dahmer wife of murdered Mississippi civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer

There’s no use in trying to oppress a group of people. You have to keep yourself down in order to keep them down. Some how or another they will get strength to rise up against you.

edited by Kyla Davis

 

Laurie Bertram Roberts is the president of Mississippi National Organization for Women, a feminist activist, full spectrum doula and writer in Jackson, MS. Her family suspected she was trouble when at age 8 she preferred reading weekly news magazines over girly magazines. Her early fascination with liberal ideals, women's rights, was not quite welcome in her conservative fundamentalist Christian home. She is incredibly passionate about reproductive justice and fighting all forms of oppression. When not speaking truth to power she is likely hanging out with her children watching sci fi or doing other nerd like things.