Bill Summary – FastDemocracy

SECOND REGULAR SESSION
                     HOUSE CONCURRENT
                      RESOLUTION NO. 50
                             103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY
                             INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVE WHALEY.
    7288H.01I                                                               JOSEPH ENGLER, Chief Clerk



           WHEREAS, the Obergefell v. Hodges decision by the Supreme Court of the United
 2 States is at odds with the Constitution of the United States, 576 U.S. 644 (2015)(hereafter
 3 Obergefell), and the principles of the United States; and
 4
 5         WHEREAS, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from
 6 governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement; and
 7
 8         WHEREAS, the Obergefell decision ignores the Declaration of Independence's
 9 proclamation that human dignity is innate and that "all men are created equal" and "endowed
10 by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights"; instead, such decision sees dignity coming
11 from the government; and
12
13         WHEREAS, Obergefell denies the framers' understanding that liberty flows from our
14 innate dignity, causing collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that
15 protects liberty, including religious liberty; and
16
17         WHEREAS, Obergefell relies on the dangerous fiction of treating the Due Process
18 Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as a font of
19 substantive rights, a doctrine that strays from the full meaning of the Constitution of the
20 United States and exalts judges at the expense of the people from whom they derive their
21 authority; and
22
23         WHEREAS, the Supreme Court of the United States recognized in United States v.
24 Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013), that the definition of marriage is "an area that has long been
25 regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States". Therefore, the state of Missouri, not
26 the Supreme Court of the United States, has the right to regulate marriage for its residents;
27 and
HCR 50                                               2

28
29           WHEREAS, Obergefell requires states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples
30   and to recognize same-sex marriages in contravention of the states' constitutions and the
31   expressed will of their voters, thus undermining the civil liberties of those states' residents and
32   voters; and
33
34          WHEREAS, marriage as an institution has been recognized as the union of one man
35   and one woman for more than two thousand years, and within common law, the basis of the
36   United States' Anglo-American legal tradition, for more than eight hundred years; and
37
38          WHEREAS, the Obergefell decision arbitrarily and unjustly rejects the definition of
39   marriage in favor of a novel, flawed interpretation of key clauses within the Constitution of
40   the United States and our nation's legal and cultural precedents; and
41
42          WHEREAS, the Obergefell decision was illegitimate because two of the Justices on
43   the Supreme Court of the United States in the majority ruling, specifically Justices Ruth
44   Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, had previously officiated same-sex weddings and thus
45   were not impartial triers of fact. Therefore, those Justices should have recused themselves
46   according to 28 U.S.C. Section 455; and
47
48          WHEREAS, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis was persecuted for her faith in
49   refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and the Supreme Court of the United States
50   declined to uphold and defend her First Amendment rights on account of the Obergefell
51   decision; and
52
53          WHEREAS, since court rulings are not laws and only legislatures elected by the
54   people may pass laws, Obergefell is an illegitimate overreach; and
55
56          WHEREAS, the people of the state of Missouri voted to define marriage as between
57   one man and one woman in Amendment 2 in 2004, by a vote of nearly seventy-one percent to
58   twenty-nine percent:
59
60          NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the members of the House of
61   Representatives of the One Hundred Third General Assembly, Second Regular Session, the
62   Senate concurring therein, hereby reject the Obergefell decision and call upon the Supreme
63   Court of the United States to reverse Obergefell and restore the natural law definition of
64   marriage, a union of one man and one woman, as was recognized at the founding; and
HCR 50                                             3

65
66           BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Missouri General Assembly insists on
67   restoring the issue of marriage and enforcement of all laws pertaining to marriage back to the
68   several states and the people; and
69
70          BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chief Clerk of the Missouri House of
71   Representatives be instructed to prepare a properly inscribed copy of this resolution for the
72   Supreme Court of the United States.
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