Two Judges Strike Down Virginia's Ban on Gay Marriage, Delegate Bob Marshall Responds

Today two judges on the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling made in February  that said Virginia’s Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage was a violation of the 14th amendment.  Their ruling also invalidates bans on gay marriage in 3 other states, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia.    So the will of the people in four states has overturned by the ruling of two judges.  The people in those four states overwhelming supported marriage as it has been for the last 5,000 years, between one man and one woman.  The Commonwealth had no one to defend the state’s constitutional amendment when Mark Herring announced in January that he would not defend the state law but would side with the plaintiffs in the case against the state.  The two judges who upheld the ruling against Virginia were Clinton appointee Roger L. Gregory  and Obama’s appointee to the court, Henry F. Floyd.  One judge disagreed the majority, Paul V. Neimeyer, calling the ruling ‘fundamentally flawed’.    Judge Neimeyer was appointed to the bench in 1990 by George H. W. Bush and he issued this statement, 

“It fails to take into account that the ‘marriage’ that has long been recognized by the Supreme Court as a fundamental right is distinct from the newly proposed relationship of a ‘same-sex marriage.’ ”

More on the story here, here, and here.  

Today Delegate Bob Marshall, co-author of the state’s marriage amendment, issued this statement:

Same Sex Marriage – A Judicial Kiss of Death for America

Manassas, VA -In the long run, advocates and defenders of so-called same sex marriage are their own best undertakers for their hubris in attempting to deny and defy the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” by which nations and cultures around the world have recognized for millennia that marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.

 Although former Justice William O. Douglas explained that, “The Fourteenth Amendment was passed to give blacks first-class citizenship,” two Richmond federal judges ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment, written in the blood of 600,000+ Americans, was passed to establish same sex “marriage” as a civil right based on immoral behavior including acts that disqualify individuals from giving blood.

 Judges Robert Gregory and Henry Floyd are ignorant of the purpose of the 14th Amendment, and arrogant to think they have the moral and legal authority to negate the votes of 1.3 million Virginia voters who gave their approval in 2006 to Virginia’s one-man, one-woman Marshall-Newman Marriage Amendment.

Judges Gregory and Floyd, who opine that two men or two women may “marry” each other do not define what they mean by “marriage,” don’t explain what consummates a homosexual “marriage” or why their decision does not support polygamy or marriages between adults and children “who love each other.”  Will three lesbian women in Massachusetts, a “throuple,” move to Virginia to have their aberrant “marriage” relationship sanctioned by Judges Gregory and Floyd?Massive legal and social coercion will be used by GLBT advocates to secure compliance with their amoral agenda.  Photographers and bakers are being fined or forced to provide services to same sex “marriages” against their conscience.  The “Human Rights Campaign” is now defending teachers fired from Catholic schools after marrying same-sex partners.  Pastors who refuse to conduct same sex marriage ceremonies will be sued, as has happened in the UK.  Church charities that feed, clothe, house, and care for the less fortunate will suffer as these lawsuits increase.The Bob Jones Supreme Court decision upheld IRS denial of tax exempt status because the school violated “public policy” by imposing race distinctions among students.  The LGBT lobby claims refusing same-sex marriage is akin to discrimination based on skin color, when in reality sexual behavior is not the same as race.  Equality of persons is not the same as equality of behavior.

If judicial elites impose a radical and immoral marriage regime on American citizens in defiance of the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” the result would be to tear the social fabric in ways that can scarcely be imagined, nor contained by judicial arrogance. ”