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Sept. 4, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:29
3068 Kim Davis Jailed Over Gay Marriage Licenses | True News
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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
Welcome to the madness of modern society.
So a Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis, was jailed on Thursday as she continued to defy a court order that she was supposed to begin issuing gay marriage licenses.
She was called before the U.S. District Judge, sick, David Bunning for a contempt of court hearing where Bunning said, Well, Davis, you should be jailed until you comply with the order to begin issuing gay marriage licenses.
And the crux of the contempt case against her involves Kentucky law, which, unlike some states laws, requires county clerks to issue marriage licenses.
Now, she inherited, I guess, was voted into the position.
Her mother had it.
Her son has a job in the clerk's office.
And she makes $80,000 a year, plus benefits probably close to $110,000, $120,000 a year for doing this.
She can't really be fired because she's elected.
And she has now elected, of course, to follow her conscience and go to jail.
Now, Judge Bunning said her good faith belief is simply not a viable defense.
He did not believe that fines would stop her from refusing to grant gay marriage licenses because she makes so much money as a government county clerk.
He said, I don't do this lightly.
It is necessary in this case.
Now, that's fascinating because there's lots of people who say, well, she has to obey the law or she has to go to jail.
Question!
If she has disobeyed a law, why not charge her with disobeying that law rather than with contempt?
You see, contempt is you're not following the rules of the court or not doing what the judge says or refusing to do something the judge demands during the process of actually being accused of a specific crime or breaking a specific law.
So if you go to court for, I don't know, strangling a cat and then you don't answer questions or whatever, you can be held in contempt.
But that's because you broke the laws against strangling cats.
Which laws exactly has she broken?
Well, that's an interesting question that remains, let's just say, somewhat up in the air.
So this clerk, she testified she came to Christ in 2011 following the death of her mother-in-law, I guess potential resurrection of said mother-in-law, before she appeared in court.
She said that she was prepared to go to jail, and she is following the strength of her convictions.
She said, I've weighed the cost and I'm prepared to go to jail.
I sure am, she said.
This has never been a gay or lesbian issue for me.
This is about upholding the word of God.
She says, Now, I have to tell you, I admire that kind of conviction.
I really do.
I wish there were a few people in office who had that kind of conviction.
Judge Bunning also said that deputy clerks in Davis' office could risk jail times if they continue to decline gay marriage licenses.
Five of the county's deputy clerks have agreed to continue to issue licenses.
Davis' son, Nathan Davis, who is the sixth deputy clerk, has not agreed to do so.
Now, of course, there were four couples, two gay and two straight, who filed suit against her for refusing to...
Issue marriage licenses after the June Supreme Court ruling.
She argued, well, you know, you can go to other Kentucky counties.
I don't mind the gay marriage thing.
I just can't put my name on it because it's against my religious convictions.
And they didn't like that and they didn't want to, I guess, go the extra 12 minutes elsewhere.
So they started the ball rolling that...
Ended by this woman going to jail for following the strength of her convictions.
Of course, that is the modern state, fundamentally.
That is the fundamental reality of the modern state.
Do you have a conviction that goes against what your rulers and masters want?
Too bad for you!
Off to jail, you go, hey, don't feel like funding an unjust war that is illegal under international law that is the highest...
Crime a leader can commit, which is the crime of aggression or the invasion of another sovereign country, not in self-defense.
Hey, you don't feel like funding an unjust war?
Too bad, off to jail with you.
Do you not like your money being given to the government and used as collateral to put your children so deep into debt that they're coming out literally in Chinese banks?
Ugh!
I'm sorry, too bad.
You have to go to jail.
See, most people are against the four major bands of common law, right?
The old developed private common law, which was no theft, no rape, no assault, and no murder.
I think we're all down with that.
I got no problem with that.
However, when you get this positive activist kind of government going on, they have all their plans.
Everybody's got a plan to make the world better.
And if you don't agree, it's awful.
To jail with you, and that is absolutely brutal.
So, the Supreme Court has said that It is a violation of the Constitution to deny a gay marriage.
And the reality is that it was a 5-4 decision.
And there were lots of judges on the Supreme Court who said it was very much anti-constitutional.
We'll get to that in a moment.
But this clerk, she was elected to take this job before SCOTUS made law, which is arguably unconstitutional, and she, this clerk, took an oath to obey her state's constitution.
See, there are states for a reason.
The founders, of course, put states because they wanted jostling competitions between legal systems as a hope of limiting the growth of federal power.
Mulligan!
Let's try that one again.
It doesn't seem to work too well.
So she took an oath to obey her state's constitution, and in her state, the state constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Now, the Supreme Court, SCOTUS, is not supposed to make law.
Not supposed to make law.
Hey, if they want to change the Constitution, they can submit it to the voodoo or witchery chicken bone entrail reading attempt to summon witches through your ass process of changing the Constitution.
They're not supposed to make law.
They're just supposed to say, is this law been validly followed or not?
I'm not supposed to make law.
And since SCOTUS kind of illegally made a law and stomped all over the state's rights, I wonder, maybe they should be the ones who are resigning or being jailed, or at least impeached, you know, if we had a Congress who actually took notice of the oath they took to protect and uphold the Constitution.
Justice Anthony Scalia, when the SCOTUS made oppositions to gay marriage illegal, he accused the majority of writing, quote, the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie, and said that its, quote, opinion is couched in a style and said that its, quote, opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is The opinions, showy profundities, he writes, are often profoundly incoherent.
He also calls the ruling a, quote, threat to American democracy.
Chief Justice John Roberts penned the principal dissent, he said, He wrote that,"...the majority's decision is an act of will, not legal judgment." And his dissent was written this way,"...if you are among the many Americans of whatever sexual orientation who favor expanding same-sex marriage, then by all means celebrate today's decision.
Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal.
Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner.
Celebrate the availability of new benefits." But do not celebrate the Constitution.
It had nothing to do with it.
Is it wrong to disobey the Supreme Court?
Well, Texas Governor Greg Abbott vowed in a statement to defend the religious liberties of those who believe marriage is between one man and uno von woman.
He said, quote, Hours after the Supreme Court ruling, Abbott issued a directive to state agencies, quote, The government must never pressure a person to abandon or violate his or her sincerely held religious beliefs regarding a topic such as marriage.
This directive, he said, applies to any agency decision including granting or denying benefits, entering agency contracts or enforcing state laws and regulations.
So if this woman should...
Go to court, then should not the governor of Texas also go to court for commanding people to disobey the law of the land.
Try that as a private citizen.
Go tell people not to pay their taxes or to disobey the law.
And assuming you're not a protester in Ferguson, you're going to be in quite a little bit of trouble.
And, of course, the gay rights advocates were saying, ah, it's the law!
You've got to obey the law!
Really?
Really?
In 2003, the Supreme Court struck down Texas's sodomy ban, invalidating it and similar laws across the country.
So, until 2003, sodomy was illegal.
And therefore, according to the gay person's argument that you have to obey the law...
No gay sex was occurring in Texas because it was illegal.
I'm sure, and rightly so, because it's a horrible law, that gay people were happily, if not gleefully, if not somewhat messily, disobeying the ban on sodomy in Texas.
And so the idea that you just have to obey the law no matter what, I don't think that that's a particularly strong argument to make.
So why this woman who ran and was elected under a law that said marriage was between a man and a woman, why should she be jailed?
But the judges who don't even bother following the Constitution, and the Congress people who don't uphold the oath, or a president who doesn't enforce the law, oh, see, they're given a complete pass.
Why?
Because, you see, they have a lot of power, and this woman doesn't.
And so the brave judiciary and the brave press are piling all on this woman who's trying to follow her moral conscience, They're all piling on this woman.
Are they piling on some significantly more important people who've refused to uphold the law?
Well, no, you see, because those other people have a lot of power, which only goes to show you that the press and the media and the judiciary, to some degree, are just a bunch of cowards who pick on the 98-pound weakling rather than people who are actually doing damage to the country and its freedoms.
It's the law of the land now.
You must obey.
You must obey.
Okay, so we have to obey the law of the land or you go to jail.
You have to enforce the laws or you go to jail.
Well, her official position obligates her.
She's got to take part in the state's licensing and recognition of marriage.
But the state's definition, her state's definition of marriage...
Is man and woman.
And so, what's she supposed to do?
Disobey the state?
Obey the activist judiciary of the SCOTUS? Who knows?
State of Kentucky is who she swore an oath to defend, not the SCOTUS. So, Kentucky has not passed or amended any marriage laws.
And the U.S. Congress has certainly passed no law defining this.
So what law is she supposed to have violated?
Supreme Court doesn't have the power.
Can't make a law.
And yet it seems to have.
And no one has any problem with that, but this woman acting on her conscience.
Well...
You're supposed to have disobeyed a law, you're supposed to have a trial by jury, and you're supposed to have due process.
Miranda writes...
No!
Contempt!
Off you go!
Off you go to jail!
This is Soviet in its nature.
This is rule by fiat.
This is not rule by law.
It is absolutely brutal.
And the courts that have the power to simply jail you for disobeying without due process, that's tyrannical.
This is banana republic dictatorship stuff.
Tell me, people out there, help me understand this.
This woman has a somewhat interesting case to make.
And she's been jailed for refusing to carry out her duties under a highly complex and ambiguous and contradictory law, Kentucky versus SCOTUS. So, if you don't enforce the law, you go to jail.
The Obama administration has refused, basically, to enforce immigration laws.
Uh, Anybody impeaching them?
Anybody sending them to jail?
Oh no, you see, they've got a lot of power, and they're very big, so they're too big to take on.
Let's pick on this little lady.
Oh, people say, well, you see, elected officials, you're not supposed to choose which laws you enforce and which laws you don't.
And if she doesn't like the laws that she's supposed to enforce, then she should just resign.
Aha!
Obama really doesn't want to enforce the immigration laws, so he should resign then.
Oh, I've got an idea.
What about the mayors in charge of the so-called sanctuary cities where they refuse to deport illegal immigrants?
Isn't that not...
Obeying the law?
Oh, you see, but those are the people that the leftists and the leftists in the media like, so they get a free pass.
They even get defended.
But this woman, this powerless largely woman, who's trying to follow her religious conscience, well, you see, the left doesn't like her, so she's got to go to jail.
This is how arbitrary and brutal this system has become.
Congress is supposed to declare war, you see.
How many times has that happened in the U.S. history?
Somewhat less than my phalanges.
So, when, let's say, Obama went to Congress and asked to basically start bombing the living crap out of Syria, was that legal?
The International Law Commission in 1951 was tasked by the UN to develop a definition of aggression.
Now, aggression doesn't sound that bad.
It sounds like you're just kind of choleric.
No.
It is the worst crime in the world.
Aggression, this is a quote,"...aggression is the use of force by a state or government against another state or government in any manner, whatever the weapons used, and whether openly or otherwise." For any reason or for any purpose other than individual or collective self-defense or in pursuance of a decision or recommendation by a competent organ of the United Nations.
So, according to international law, if you initiate the use of violence not in immediate self-defense or not through the UN, you are guilty of a war crime.
This is what they hung Nazi leaders for.
Oh wait, that's because they won the war.
And of course, the whole point of winning a war is to do pretty much what your enemies did, but get away with it.
That's why you try.
So, Syria, of course, is a sovereign state.
And it's currently at war with a huge number of external enemies.
That have infiltrated the country with the covert support of all of these countries around the world.
Syria is now subject to invasion and bombardment and the arming of its enemies and other forms of aggression by the United States.
Has it ever threatened to attack the United States or its allies or its interests?
Why?
No, it hasn't.
So good luck with 12 million refugees a day, Europe, because...
It's really important that when people disobey the law, they go to jail, you see!
So important!
Because the county clerk who's not rubber stamping something which people can drive five more minutes to go and get somewhere else, that woman has to go to jail.
But for the international war crime of aggression, Obama gets a free pass and postage stamps in the future.
The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg unequivocally stated in 1948, quote, to initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it constitutes within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
The resolution granted to Obama by Congress gave him the authority to wage war inside Syria, of course, without the consent of the Syrian government. .
And that actually gives the right of Syria the right of self-defense, because it is being invaded.
In other words, with regards to Syria, the United States is the war criminal, and Syria is the innocent defender of its property.
This is, of course, Obama is a legal scholar.
He's supposed to have focused on international law, so ignorance of the law, while no excuse, is even less of an excuse for him.
The inviolable right of self-defense.
Chapter 7, Article 51 of the UN Charter states that, quote, nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of collective or individual self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.
And so, Syria is well within its legal rights.
To defend itself with military force against the endless U.S. aggression, ground forces, aerial movement, doesn't matter.
So, that to me would seem a little bit more important than whether somebody wants to rubber stamp a wedding.
He didn't get UN Security Council resolution to authorize a war in Libya, and he distorted the meaning of Resolution 1973.
There was supposed to be originally just a no-fly zone over Libya.
He transformed it into a de facto declaration of war.
The Obama administration has waged its secret wars in Somalia, Pakistan, Mali, Yemen, all over the world.
It fermented a civil war in Ukraine.
The disastrous foreign policy has brought the U.S. and Russia in direct confrontation for the first time since the Cold War.
The Obama-led war on Libya created a failed state and a breeding ground for terrorists.
Drone war in Pakistan killed endless amounts of civilians and created a new hotbed for terrorist recruitment.
Massively horrendous.
Obama's policy in Somalia?
Massive amounts of Somalis killed, and a directly war crime criminal policy has led to the deaths of at least a quarter million Somalis from starvation.
Oh, but see, the important thing is that Obama get the Nobel Peace Prize.
Apparently that's just affirmative action for evil.
Still wearing it, still says he's justified it.
So...
So basically, we've got a wonderful precedent here from the judge.
You see, if you don't obey the law, then you must be thrown in jail for contempt.
And boy, that happened really quickly, didn't it?
Lois Lerner...
Dragging on Hillary Clinton, dragging on.
Boy, but if you're a clerk who doesn't want to rub stamp something because of her convictions, boom, boom, boom, you're in jail before the end of the day.
Because, remember, legal consistency and the moral high ground is so, so important.
I don't know, maybe she just claimed to be an illegal immigrant, just be released no matter what she did, and everything would be completely fine.
Ah, the Democrats and all the Republicans and everyone on the Internet.
Ah, this woman should just resign.
Mayor of San Francisco created a sanctuary city.
And that resulted in murder and crime and so on.
Resign?
Court?
We don't know.
Okay, just to clarify, I don't think that the government should have anything to do with marriage.
The only reason the government has anything to do with marriage in America is because of racism, because the Democrats put forward marriage licensing laws designed to keep blacks and whites from marrying, so it's a legacy of racism, like segregation, should be gotten rid of.
Marriage licenses should be gotten rid of completely.
The government should have nothing to do with it.
It's a private contract.
I have no problem with homosexuals marrying...
I think that's fine.
I've got no problem with that whatsoever.
But the reality is, we currently have a system where you go to jail for following your conscience.
That doesn't even happen in the military.
In the military, you can get out of war if you're against war.
You can follow your conscience.
You can change your mind.
You don't go to jail.
You don't go to jail.
This woman's following her conscience.
I don't agree with that, with what she's following, but I admire her for doing it.
And I think it stands revealed the revolting hypocrisy where the supposed brave moral warriors take on an insignificant county clerk in Kentucky while leaving the war criminals at the top of the pyramid awash in flowers and blood and disaster.
That is a state we are living in.
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