Christian Apologist Frank Turek: States Can Nullify Federal Court Decisions On Marriage Equality

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If you follow the religious right for any period of time, you’ll quickly discover that as unhinged as its spokesmen can sometimes sound in public, they sound even more so when they think they’re speaking just to their followers. For instance, in 2012, after being deservedly slammed for attacking President Obama’s faith, Franklin Graham went on CNN and seemingly walked back his disgraceful attack. But only two days later, he told an audience on American Family Radio that he questioned the Christian commitment of any believer who supported Obama’s reelection.

Well, the yeomen at People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch stumbled on another example. Fittingly, it was on American Family Radio. On Wednesday’s edition of “Today’s Issues,” hosted by American Family Association president Tim Wildmon, noted Christian apologist Frank Turek of Cross Examined claimed that same-sex marriage is, at bottom, a states’ rights issue. He was expanding on a column he wrote in the wake of a federal judge tossing out North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage. In that column, Turek argued, as did most of his religious right colleagues, that “we are no longer free or equal” if it is possible for 23 judges to overturn the will of the 41 million people across the country who voted these amendments into their constitutions. Turek claimed that a governor of a state where a same-sex marriage ban had been overturned by a federal court should protest such a decision by simply declaring it unconstitutional and refusing to enforce it. He said that a governor taking such a stand would be telling a judge, “If you want to change our laws, then respect our people and our Constitution by convincing us to change our minds in the voting booth.”

Frank Turek (courtesy WikiMedia Commons)
Frank Turek (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

At first blush, it sounds like the standard argument right-wingers use when courts overturn laws adopted by referendum. It’s based on the patently erroneous theory that laws adopted by direct vote of the people are somehow superior to laws adopted by ordinary statute, and are therefore beyond judicial review. As anyone who has taken a ninth-grade civics class knows, laws passed by referendum have to meet the same constitutional standards as ordinary statutes. But Turek is proposing something several times more insidious than that — namely, nullification, the theory that a state can unilaterally declare that a federal law or court decision is unconstitutional and will not be enforced within its borders. Before the Civil War, there were numerous attempts by states to nullify federal laws rather than take the step of challenging their constitutionality in court.

Although it seemed the Civil War put an end to this, a number of Southern states tried to nullify Brown v. Board of Education on the grounds that its order to desegregate schools was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court firmly disposed of this issue in 1958, when it unanimously held in Cooper v. Aaron that states do not have the right to refuse to enforce federal laws simply because they don’t agree with them. To show you how far out of the mainstream this is, even the Federalist Society agrees that states do not have the power to nullify federal law. The Federalist Society, people. It makes you wonder–are Christian schools and Christian-oriented homeschooling programs teaching this? And if they are, do they need to be held up for public ridicule?

Turek went further off the deep end when co-host Ed Vitigliano suggested that Texas should be the state to throw down the gauntlet. Turek thought he had a better suggestion — South Carolina. His reasoning has to be reproduced in full to be believed.

“It started in South Carolina with the Civil War, as you know, for the same kind of issue — states’ rights. Obviously the issue is different. I mean, slavery was different than obviously this. But, I mean, it was a states’ rights issue.”

It says a lot about Turek that he thought it was even remotely acceptable to use South Carolina’s defense of slavery as a comparison. And Wildmon and Vitigliano’s reaction is even more telling. Or rather, lack thereof–they simply continued with the interview.

I admit, I’ve learned to expect very little from American Family Radio. After all, Wildmon keeps Bryan Fischer on the payroll even after Fischer said that Shepard Smith was “a gay liberal” for calling out the fearmongering over Ebola, that Native Americans deserved to be wiped out for not becoming Christians, that blacks on welfare “rut like rabbits,” and Muslims must become Christians if they want to emigrate to this country. But you would think that even comparisons like this would be beyond the pale. Apparently not.

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Turek’s stock in trade is conducting seminars at college campuses to fight the trend of Christian students leaving the church while in college. Perhaps when he pays a visit to a college near you, someone ought to call him out on his defense of nullification. If he’s actually willing to defend a completely discredited constitutional theory, it says a lot about how far out of touch he is, and it says a lot about how out of touch the religious right is as a whole.

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Darrell Lucus.jpg Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC at Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.

 

 

Edited on D.H.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.