Congresman Steve King.
Congressman Steve King has introduced legislation that seeks to forbid the federal courts from hearing same-sex marriage cases. “I wish our founding fathers might have named that Supreme Court something other than supreme,” King said.
King plans to be at the Supreme Court today as it hears arguments in a case that could make same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. “Now we have a Supreme Court that thinks, ‘Oh, it’s no problem. We can redefine marriage,'” King said. “We just do that because we’re the Supreme Court, after all.'”
King cites the 1857 Dred Scott decision as evidence the nation’s highest court is sometimes wrong on social issues of the day. “It said that African Americans…could never be citizens of the United States — a Supreme Court decision,” King said. “They decided that congress could not ban slavery.”
King calls his bill the “Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015.” King also warns the federal courts were created by congress and they can be abolished by congress, too, with just the U.S. Supreme Court remaining. “Down to the Supreme Court that doesn’t have to be nine judges, seven judges, five judges or three,” King says. “It could be reduced to the chief justice of the supreme court at his own card table, with his own candle, working pro bono. That’s all it takes to have the minimum amount in the Constitution.”
King says the U.S. Supreme Court should not have the “final answer” on marriage and there is “no way” he is going to accept a decision that legalizes same-sex marriage in all 50 states. “Marriage is at stake and the arguments before this court may well determine the future of this country,” King says. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the same-sex marriage case is likely to be released in June. Federal judges have thus far struck down same-sex marriage bans in 22 states.
Same-sex marriage bans remain in effect in 13 other states. Iowa is among the 15 states where same-sex marriage is legal either by a state court’s decision or because state legislators have enacted laws allowing it.