Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality in the coming weeks, don't expect the Republican far right to settle for just calling for a constitutional amendment against equality. Don't expect them to settle for their ongoing crusade to write the right to discriminate into state laws, as in
North Carolina, where public officials can now refuse to perform any marriages in order to get out of performing the ones they don't like, or
Michigan, where government-funded adoption agencies can now turn people away on religious grounds. We're talking about a temper tantrum that will go far beyond that.
Talking Points Memo's Tierney Sneed rounds up some of the wild promises coming from prominent Republicans. Both Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have signed a civil disobedience pledge saying that "We will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us to violate a clear biblical understanding of marriage as solely the union of one man and one woman." Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Steve King have introduced separate bills prohibiting the courts from taking up marriage cases. And Santorum, Huckabee, Cruz, King, and others have called for Congress or a future Republican president to ignore and overrule any Supreme Court decision they don't like.
According to Ted Cruz, "If the court tries to do this it will be rampant judicial activism. It will be lawlessness, it will be fundamentally illegitimate." In Ben Carson's reading of the Constitution, "if the legislative branch creates a law or changes a law, the executive branch has a responsibly to carry it out. It doesn’t say they have the responsibility to carry out a judicial law. And that's something we need to talk about."
At the very same time these Republicans are railing against President Obama's alleged lawlessness, they are actively promising to break the law. Republicans have brought lawsuit after lawsuit against Obama's initiatives, hoping this conservative court would roll back progress. But now that a decision they don't like is looming, they're talking not about trying to change the composition of the court but about defying it. Imagine if Obama or Hillary Clinton did the same. Just imagine.