Statement of Field Director of MassResistance on Idaho HJM1, Resolution Against Obergefell

My name is Arthur Schaper, and I am the Field Director for MassResistance, the international pro0family group that makes the difference.

On behalf of our activists throughout the beautiful State of Idaho, I want to express my gratitude to State Rep. Heather Scott and her colleagues for hearing this common-sense, straightforward Resolution Against Obergefell v. Hodges.

For too long, the United States Supreme Court has made decisions and imposed rulings that it did not have the right, authority, or even the power to implement.

First of all, two of the justices who weighed in on this decision had officiated so-called same-sex “weddings.” They were not impartial triers of fact or law, and they should have recused themselves.

Second, United States v. Windsor, a previous Supreme Court ruling, clearly established that legislation regarding marriage is not one of the enumerated powers in Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution. Obergefell never addressed that issue properly.

Third, The Tenth Amendment is germane to this discussion, and the Supreme Court should have respected the Constitution and respected the power to define and enforce marriage contracts to the several states and the people.

Fourth, our constitutional republic is based on common law, and for centuries, marriage has been recognized as the union of one man and one woman. The Supreme Court had neither the right nor the reason to undermine the fundamental tenets of Anglo-American jurisprudence when they issued their poor decision.

Other problems with Obergefell include its disturbing precedent that liberty and human dignity are gifts only bestowed by the state. Nothing could be further in conflict with our Constitutional norms or our Founding principles. The rights of men come from God, not the government, as declared in the Declaration of Independence. They are not gifts that must depend on the government or the state to be distributed. Such a flawed legal theory will only invite more government tyranny at the expense of the rights of the states and the American people.

Some will argue that revisiting and overturning Obergefell v Hodges would also mean preventing interracial couples from marrying. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are born of diverse ethnic or racial backgrounds. However, there is no evidence that individuals are born homosexual, and therefore such acts are behaviors, not identities. They are not civil rights.

Furthermore, in the ten years since Obergefell was imposed on the United States, an abundance of research has come forward indicating that children do indeed need their mother and their father. One of the poor reasons one of the justices gave to support redefining marriage was that he didn’t want children not to have their parents. But Marriage as an institution is not just about the husband and the wife, but about the rearing of children and the basic cultural underpinnings which make civilization possible. Children need mothering and fathering, not just mere parenting.

The State of Idaho should be commended for taking this bold stance, and I urge the House State Affairs Committee to support this Resolution.