Clerk crushed by 'gay marriage' ruling has case move toward Supremes

(Supreme Court may have to decide whether an employee of the Government only has a Religious Faith of a 501(c)(3) Corporation which the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INC. owns and really has no say so on their beliefs!)

Clerk crushed by 'gay marriage' ruling has case move toward Supremes

6th Circuit asked if govt. can force Americans to violate religious rights

Published: 13 hours ago

Bob Unruh

The collateral damage that the U.S. Supreme Court inflicted when a 5-4 majority found a right to “same-sex marriage” in the U.S. Constitution could end up before the high court itself.

Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis already is appealing to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a federal court’s decision ordering her to issue marriage license to same-sex couples, said Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, who represents Davis.
U.S. District Judge David Bunning issued a temporary stay of his order last week as Davis pursued her appeal.
Many analysts have predicted the conflict will have to be resolved at by the Supreme Court.
“To issue a license for same-sex marriage violates the core of Kim Davis’ Christian beliefs,” Staver said Wednesday. “This is not tangential to her beliefs but rather amounts to open disobedience to God. There are alternative ways to accommodate the religious conviction of Kim Davis, and that is what we will ask the court of appeals to consider.”
Liberty Counsel is seeking a stay from the 6th Circuit that would last during the course of the appeal.
In June, the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision created a right to “same-sex marriage” over the vehement objections and warnings of four justices and the First Amendment’ protections for freedom of religion.
Who put the American family in the bull’s-eye? Read “Takedown, From Communists to Progressives How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage”
The Davis cases poses the question of whether or not the government can force someone to violate constitutional religious rights in order to accommodate the newly recognized right to “same-sex marriage.”
Kentucky Gov. Steven Beshear, a Democrat, has told clerks to issue the licenses or resign. But that order would appear to create a religious test for public officials, meaning those with disfavored beliefs would be banned from office, which is unconstitutional.
When Bunning issued his order, Liberty Counsel immediately filed a Notice of Appeal in the case.
The judge’s ruling appeared to advance President Obama’s ongoing campaign to replace “freedom of religion” with “freedom of worship.”
WND has reported that for years the Obama administration has referenced the First Amendment constitutional protection in new language.
Most recently, a big list of prominent faith leaders joined to ask Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to fix a problematic document that references “worship” rather than “religion.”
“We … write to you with deep concern about the wording of the answer to question 51 on the study materials for the civics portion of the naturalization exam. The question asks students to provide two rights guaranteed to everyone living in the United States, and listed among the possible correct answers is ‘freedom of worship.’ We write to you requesting that this answer be immediately corrected to the constitutionally accurate answer – ‘freedom of religion,’” the letter said.
“We believe that the wording change we are requesting represents much more than a ‘distinction without a difference.’ Many totalitarian forms of government have allowed for the freedom of worship in their governmental documents but in practice severely restricted individual religious freedoms. The phrase freedom of worship, as it has been used throughout history, articulates an intentionally limited freedom that restricts a citizen’s rights to the four walls of a government-sanctioned house of worship and only for specific times and events.”
The letter was issue by the Weyrich Lunch participants. The group is named after the late chairman of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation Paul Weyrich.
Bunning wrote that Davis can live out her beliefs privately. But he ruled she cannot exercise her “freedom of religion” publicly.
Davis defied the order, declining to respond to immediate demands from homosexual activists for licenses, pending a resolution to her case.
See the Big List of Christian Coercion compiled by WND, where business owners, officials and others have been bludgeoned by the law, activists – even judges – for their faith.
Bunning wrote: “The state is not asking her to condone same-sex unions on moral or religious grounds, nor is it restricting her from engaging in a variety of religious activities. Davis remains free to practice her Apostolic Christian beliefs. She may continue to attend church twice a week, participate in Bible study and ministry to female inmates at the Rowan County Jail. She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do.
“However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County Clerk,” he said, citing the new same-sex marriage right.
The judge missed the fact that there was no constitutional right to “same-sex marriage” when Davis took her oath.
Early in President Obama’s tenure in the White House, Catholic Online and other media outlets reported what appeared to be a deliberate attack on the Constitution’s “freedom of religion” protections.
The report noted a crucial change in Obama’s language between his June 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt, where he spoke of a Muslim America and its “freedom of religion,” and the November 2009 memorial for the Fort Hood soldiers gunned down by a radical Muslim, where he termed it “freedom of worship.”
From that point, “freedom of worship” has become the term of choice, the report said.
The use of the term in the naturalization process recently drew attention in Congress.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., charged during a recent hearing that included Johnson that the government is “misrepresenting” the First Amendment.
“We in the United States actually have freedom of religion, not freedom of worship,” Lankford said.
See his comments:

He said: "The questionnaire civics test has in it one of these things, 'What are two rights of everyone living in the United States, and it listed out six different things: freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government, freedom of worship, the right to bear arms. I'd love to see 'freedom of worship' switched to 'freedom of religion.'"
Sarah Torre of the Heritage Foundation said the difference is significant. In practice across America, the "freedom to worship" seldom has been challenged or even questioned. But "freedom of religion" is under direct fire.
Bunning charged that the Supreme Court's ruling means same-sex couples seeking a marriage license cannot be denied. And his ruling puts the First Amendment's protections regarding freedom of religion in a secondary position.
Liberty Counsel has pointed out that those who brought the case have the option to obtain their license in more than 100 other locations but refused in order to target Davis specifically.
The legal team noted Bunning's reference to the fact that Davis' rights "are, in fact, being both 'threaten[ed]' and 'infringe'd]' by plaintiffs' demands for her approval of their proposed unions."
"The court stated that 'this civil action presents a conflict between two individual liberties held sacrosanct in American jurisprudence,'" the document explains.
WND reported Davis also has brought a case against her own governor, Beshear, for arbitrarily picking and choosing religious beliefs for exemptions from the law and thus putting her in the position to be a defendant in the current case.
Davis asks that Beshear be made liable for any damages that might be assessed against her in the marriage case.
"Beshear is unlawfully picking and choosing the conscience-based exemptions to marriage that he deems acceptable," says the complaint, brought by Liberty Counsel on behalf of Davis against Beshear.
"For instance, when Attorney General [Jack] Conway refused to defend Kentucky's marriage laws, Beshear did not admonish Conway that 'neither your oath nor the Supreme Court dictates what you must believe. But as elected officials, they do prescribe how we must act,' but Gov. Beshear did so direct county clerks like Davis."
Who put the American family in the bull's-eye? Read "Takedown, From Communists to Progressives How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage" to read the origins of the war.
The case is one of the first to develop since the Obergefell decision.
When the Supreme Court announced the decision June 26, Justice Samuel Alito said it "usurps the constitutional right of the people to decide whether to keep or alter the traditional understanding of marriage."
"The decision will also have other important consequences," he said. "It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent."

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