States Buck Federal Courts on Gay Marriage After Americas founders overthrew King George III, they were in no mood to have an overly strong central government take his placeso they limited the federal government to delegated powers. Thats when we were called these United States. The battle over same-sex marriage has put the delegated powers and the long-dormant issue of states rights in the forefront as four states buck federal courts over same-sex unions. Despite votes by the people in 21 states to keep the traditional definition of marriage and ban same-sex marriage, federal courts have trumped the peoples will. Last month, Alabamas Chief Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley agreed not to enforce a federal district courts decision allowing gay marriage, with Moore writing to the governor, As you know, nothing in the United States Constitution grants the federal government the authority to redefine the institution of marriage. Alabama is not alone as three other southern states have joined the fight, the New York Times reports. Republican-dominated state legislatures in Texas, Oklahoma and South Carolina have introduced bills that would forbid local or state government employees from giving licenses for same-sex marriages. The bills would also take away the salaries of employees that issue those licenses, despite federal court overturning such bans as unconstitutional. Besides that, South Carolina, North Carolina and Utah would allow officials to opt out of involvement in same-sex marriage based on religious convictions. Even if the United States Supreme Courts, in a currently pending case, decides same-sex marriages must be allowed in all 50 states, as it is in 36 states and the District of Columbia, the controversy is not likely to go away. The millions of people who voted that marriage is a union of a man and a woman are not simply going to throw their beliefs away, said South Carolina Republican Senator Lee Bright. This fight will continue on regardless of which way the Supreme Court rules. A federal judge in November overturned a 2006 constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a woman and a man approved by 78 percent of South Carolinavoters. Bright is the sponsor of a bill permiting government employees to opt out of issuing marriage licenses on religious grounds, similar to laws that allow medical workers not to be involved in abortions. Some opponents of gay marriage see similarities to the battle over abortion that did not end after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion. In some ways, this is a constitutional battle of amendments between the 14th, which guarantees that no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of its laws andoriginally was intendedto protect blacks after the Civil War, and the 10th, which says, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. If the 14thAmendment means the federal courts can impose on the states whatever their issue of the day is, what is the value of the 10th? The states bucking the federal judiciary may seem like defiance. But defiance, Jack Kenny writes in the New American, is sometimes the only way the people in their respective states can attempt to check a federal government that exceeds the authority delegated to it in our Constitution. So argued James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in their writings against the federal Alien and Sedition Acts in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. After the Supreme Court delivered its Dred Scott decision in 1857, Abraham Lincoln did not call for defiance, but he did suggest that a Supreme Court decision may be subject to ongoing challenges. As he stated in his first Inaugural Address: I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. The people of 21stcentury America have largely ceased to be their own rulers, due in no small part to an exaggerated deference to that eminent tribunal. Such measures as are now being considered in a few of our states are a sign that the republican spirit, though long slumbering, is not yet dead. For more stories about battling national government overreach: linkandlink. Keep fighting the good fight, Holly! 