Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

The Fall of Democracy
Dr. Robert L. Sumner, Editor

THE FALL OF DEMOCRACY! 

(Day it Happened: June 26, 2015)

By the Editor

For some 6,000 years and more, marriage has been between man and woman, male and female. By a majority of one, the legal brains on the United States Supreme Court have determined that the law for all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and lesser associates – plus the millions of citizens from the Atlantic to the Pacific – is that gender has absolutely nothing to do with marriage! America will shortly learn that this ruling will open the doors to all forms of idiocy and the decay of the human race in America!

The ruling voided all the state laws against sodomy and same-sex marriage, making the latter legitimate all across the country. Ted Cruz, the noble senator and presidential candidate from Texas, said the Court had “abdicat[ed] its duty to uphold the Constitution” and said he planned to introduce a Constitutional amendment to prevent the court from interfering with state-level laws. He will get many coauthors for his bill, but it doesn’t have the chance of a snowball in a hot house of being enacted. He lamented, “The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws is astonishing.”

While Cruz’s proposed action is good, it doesn’t go far enough!

Obama was so delighted (he discovered and endorsed the idea only three years ago, remember; he was against it before he was for it) that he had the White House lit up on the outside with rainbow colors! (The rainbow is God’s guarantee that He will never again destroy the world by water – but destruction as a result of wickedness is not in that promise.)

Chief Justice Roberts, after blowing it the previous day with ObamaCare, said, “[T]hose who founded our country would not recognize the majority’s conception of the judicial role.” He got that right! He added that the Constitution “… had nothing to do with it.” The strange thing is that he couldn’t see that regarding ObamaCare in the previous day’s ruling.

The U.S. Justice Foundation, after telling folks in advance to “be prepared for the worst,” admitted, “… the Supreme Court has disappointed us again. Hopefully over the coming weeks and months, state and local government officials and the people at large will be able to draw from these articles justification and techniques to resist the Supreme Court’s lawless decision.”

The good news is that Ginsburg and Kagan have left themselves open to removal from the Court for violating the Constitution’s “good behavior” standard in refusing to recuse themselves. “Good behavior” is based on Article III of the Constitution, stating in Section 1:

“The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office” (emphasis added).

Obviously, their refusal to recuse themselves, since both had performed same-sex weddings, was a violation of “good behavior”!

The Justice Foundation which, in a series of 10 or 12 previous articles, had demonstrated that a Supreme Court decision mandating same-sex marriage would be illegitimate, noted now:

As Blackstone said, it would not just be bad law; it would be no law at all. That decision has now transpired. These articles also demonstrate that the American people and our elected officials have many ways to resist the unconstitutional decision of the Court. The question now is, will our political leaders abandon the true Constitution to embrace the decision of the Court?

In the coming days we will continue to be releasing articles further discussing the justification for and techniques that can be used by Congress, state officials, and the American people to resist today’s unlawful decision. We urge supporters of traditional marriage to view today’s loss as a setback, but by no means a final decision of anything. The battle continues.

Justice Kennedy, the supposed swing vote on the Court, voted with the bad guys in both cases. In fact, Ronald Reagan nominated him for the Court about three decades ago (after the Democrats got rid of his first two nominees by refusing to consider the nominations until both eventually withdrew their names; one was Robert Bork, probably the most qualified man ever nominated to the Court) and Reagan’s team were admittedly scared of Kennedy because of positions he held on sodomy issues, although he seemed straight on almost everything else. Alas, he helped strike down the Defense of Marriage Act and in this same-sex marriage case he cast the deciding vote that opened wide the doors to gross immorality.

This was such a strategic case that all four voting against the same-sex ruling wrote their own individual dissents. Probably the best was Justice Antonin Scalia, who warned that the Court’s decision was a “threat to American democracy.” Indeed! (See the title of this article.)

Since Scalia, who has been on the Court over a quarter of a century, presented the sharpest and strongest dissent, we suggest you go on line and read it in its entirety. Here is a brief portion, taken from a report by Dr. David R. Reagan, who wrote:

This is a naked judicial claim to legislative “indeed, super-legislative” power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. Except as limited by a constitutional prohibition agreed to by the People, the States are free to adopt whatever laws they like, even those that offend the esteemed Justices' 'reasoned judgment.' A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

Justice Scalia supplied a very interesting insight into the Court itself when he pointed out that it is not representative of the nation in any way and therefore has no right to legislate. He noted that all nine justices have law degrees from either Harvard or Yale. Six are from New York or New Jersey (Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan), two are from California (Breyer and Kennedy) and one is from Georgia (Thomas). Not a one of them is from the Southwest, nor is there a true Westerner on the Court. And most significantly, none of them are Evangelicals or even members of a Protestant denomination! Six are Catholics (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Sotomayor) and three are Jews (Breyer, Ginsburg and Kagan). Scalia's conclusion about this make-up of the Court was as follows:

“... to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.”

Justice Scalia also expressed sincere concern about how the Court's decision will impact the free exercise of religion on the part of those who differ with the decision on biblical grounds. He pointed out that the majority decision emphasized that the decision would not impact the right of believers to continue to "advocate" and "teach" their views of marriage. But the First Amendment guarantees the free "exercise" of religion, and that is a word the court "ominously" did not use.

We can be assured that there will now be an all-out assault on Christians by the Gay Mafia as they attempt to force us to violate our biblical beliefs. They will confront all Christian businesses that participate in any way in marriage ceremonies, they will insist that ministers perform their marriage rites and they will demand that churches host their weddings. And when churches and ministers refuse, there will be a demand for them to be stripped of tax exemptions and benefits (like the housing allowance for pastors). And you can also be assured that ultimately there will be attempts to make even anti-Gay speech, including sermons, illegal as "hate crimes."

Dr. Reagan suggested that the date of the release of the Court’s ruling “…should be put on the headstone of our nation because it is the day that America died. We have sealed our destruction. We are now a walking-dead nation.”

While we agree with that possibility, we are not willing to go that far . . . yet!

Justice Scalia didn’t mind taking a professional jab at his colleague on the Court, Justice Kennedy, saying he did not even act like a judge, but rather “… he wrote as if he were an existentialist philosopher seeking the meaning of life, as if the ‘liberty’ protected in the Constitution was a personal quest ‘to define and express [one’s personal] identity’.” Wow!

He continued:

But the Constitution is not some philosophical work written by Jean Paul Sartre. Rather, it is a political and legal document designed by America’s founders to secure the unchanging God-given rights to life, liberty, and property which are deeply rooted in the 18th century soil of the nation. Justice Kennedy showed no regard for these fixed principles, opting for an evolutionary approach to law – asserting that the existential definition of marriage changes with changing times.

One of the editor’s judicial heroes (we quoted his decision in a case about a pardon for George Wilson in our Heaven Can Be Yours!) insisted the duty of the Court was merely to “say what the law is,” not legislate it, but merely to make “permanent” those principles the people desired. And, so that those principles would not be “mistaken or forgotten,” the people committed them to writing in law. Thus, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Marbury v. Madison, “… it is the province and duty for the courts to say what the law is,” not to make it up as they thought it should be.

The five jurists in the same-sex case were making law as they went along.

Job in one of his responses to Zophar made an interesting comment about judges. IF God is finished, as some think, with America, that statement in Job 12:17 fits right in. Job said there about Jehovah: “He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges fools.” If any judge at any court level every played the fool in a greater fashion than the foolish five did in their same-sex marriage ruling, we don’t know who or when.

Something tells me we haven’t heard the last of this!

We don’t like to use scare tactics and this is no conspiracy theory since it came from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, meaning it should be authentic. Roberts warned that churches refusing to recognize the Court’s legalization of Sodomite marriage could lose their tax exempt status. If so, all true Bible believers will say, “so be it!” As Daniel refused to obey the “supreme court of his day’s decision,” so will we.

Roberts quoted the Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s response to Justice Samuel Alito’s question during last April’s oral arguments on the case when the latter asked if  schools teaching “that marriage is between one man and one woman would face treatment similar to pro-segregation schools during the civil rights era.” Verrilli replied, “It’s certainly going to be an issue … I don’t deny that.”

The Chief Justice concluded: “Indeed, the Solicitor General candidly acknowledged that the tax exemptions of some religious institutions would be in question if they opposed same-sex marriage. See Tr. of Oral Arg. on Question 1, at 36–38. There is little doubt that these and similar questions will soon be before this Court. Unfortunately, people of faith can take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.”

Roberts also noted, “Five lawyers have closed debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people …”

Meanwhile, around the States, when Shelly Cranford and lesbian partner Shannon Smith stepped up to the clerk at the courthouse in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and plopped down their $21 marriage license fee just hours after the Supreme Court ruling, they were turned away, still single. It seems that James Hood, the state’s attorney general had just announced Mississippi would not observe (or obey) the Court’s ruling. Good for him!

Meanwhile, in Texas, the noble attorney general in that state, Kenneth Paxton, said the Court’s ruling was “a lawless ruling” and told state workers they could cite “religious objections” to deny same-sex marriage licenses. While he warned that any “clerk, Justice of the peace or other administrator who declines to issue a license to a same-sex couple could face litigation or a fine,” he also said “numerous lawyers” stood ready to offer their services “free of charge” to any official that refused to grant one.

What a can of worms the Supremes have opened!

By the way, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Alabama’s ex-governor, suggested good people do the same with this ruling as Abraham Lincoln did with the Court’s Dred Scott decision (slaves were not fully human); that is, ignore it! He said the ruling was false and he treated it accordingly. We should do the same with this ruling.

I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I predict there will be an epidemic of HIV/AIDS cases in this country like you wouldn’t believe. In fact, when was the last government report you heard regarding such numbers? The powers that be apparently don’t want us peons to know. It wouldn’t be politically correct. However, the Sodomites are dying daily.

[See additional comments on the editor’s Facebook, written hours after the decision was released.]

[Addendum] Since writing the above, one of the things we predicted has already come to pass. Less than a week after the Supremes handed down their “Dred Scott Style” decision, a trio in Montana walked into the Yellowstone County Courthouse in Billings and the male, Nathan Collier, demanded a marriage license to legitimize his illegal polygamous marriage to his wives, Victoria and Christine. As he noted, based on the Court’s ruling, “It's about marriage equality … You can't have this without polygamy."

He is right, of course. If same-sex marriage is a citizen’s right, so is polygamy. The clerk in charge refused the application, but promised to check with Yellowstone County Attorney Scott Twito and get back with him before making a final decision. The last we knew, Twito was not returning calls (poor boy).

Nate, originally a Mormon by faith (no surprise here), owns a local refrigeration business. Fifteen years ago he married Victoria, now 40, and in 2007 he married Christine in a “religious” (sic) ceremony, but didn’t file the license because he didn’t want to be charged with bigamy. Now he says the permission for same-sex wedding “disrespects and subordinates” him and his two wives.

If Collier’s name sounds familiar to you (it didn’t to me) it is because he and “his wives” were featured on the “Sister Wives” cable television “reality” show honoring immorality earlier – I believe this year. The three involved in this adulterous relationship have seven children, some brought into “the family” and some home grown!

Adulterous Christine put it like this: “It's two distinct marriages, its two distinct unions, and for us to come together and create family, what's wrong with that? … I don't understand why it's looked upon and frowned upon as being obscene." Obviously, Christy is not very familiar with the Word of God!

The cofounder of the Utah polygamy advocacy group Principle Voices, Anne Wilde, opined, "Ninety percent or more of the fundamentalist Mormons don't want [their marriages] legalized, they want it decriminalized.” Thanks to a federal judge’s ruling in 2013, “cohabitation” is legal in Utah, but bigamy remains illegal.

Yes, what “a can of worms” the Supremes opened in its “same-sex marriage” legalization! Can’t anything be done to keep ignoramuses like those immoral-acting five off the Court?

By the way, wouldn’t it be good to have another Thomas Jefferson back in the White House? Tom authored a bill that would have penalized sodomy by castration. He noted that his home state (Virginia) made dismemberment of the offensive organ the penalty for the horribly vile sin of sodomy.