About That “Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage”

[cbayer]

http://religiondispatches.org/about-that-pledge-in-solidarity-to-defend-marriage/

A group of religious right activists (and a couple of presidential hopefuls) have signed a “Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage,” in which they “warn” the highest court in the land that they plan to resist if it strikes down same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional.

The pledge makes the now (sadly) common comparison between religious right activists protesting what they claim are the trampled civil rights of marriage equality opponents and Martin Luther King, Jr. If they don’t quite envision themselves penning another Letter from a Birmingham Jail, they do picture themselves sitting in jail due to the supposedly heavy hand of a religion-hostile government, and fighting a cause they claim is equal to that of King’s still-unfulfilled dream.

But the authors of this “pledge” don’t stop with the King comparison. As the nation has watched the deaths of Michael Brown, of Freddie Gray, of Tamir Rice, and of far too many others, these self-styled civil rights champions liken a possible Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality to the Dred Scott decision. That’s right, while young, black, unarmed men are disproportionately brutalized by law enforcement, these defenders of “life” compare the dehumanization of black people to some imagined infringement of their rights should gays and lesbians be granted the right to get married.

“We will view any decision by the Supreme Court or any court the same way history views the Dred Scott,” the pledge reads, referring to the 1857 Supreme Court case holding that African Americans could not be citizens because they were “beings of an inferior order.” The pledge claims a “decision purporting to redefine marriage flies in the face of the Constitution and is contrary to the natural created order,” just as the Court wrongly “redefined” what it is to be human in Dred Scott. (Don’t worry, I don’t get it, either.) Because “no civil institution, including the United States Supreme Court or any court, has authority to redefine marriage,” the pledge goes on, “as people of faith we pledge obedience to our Creator when the State directly conflicts with higher law.”

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