Gohmert: Pro-Gay ‘Marriage’ Judges ‘Need Some Basic Plumbing Lessons’
Liberal federal judges who have ruled against state laws barring same-sex “marriages,” essentially arguing that there is no biological evidence to support the idea of marriage between a man and a woman, “need some basic plumbing lessons,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), himself a former state district judge for Texas’s 7th judicial district and chief justice of Texas’s 12th Court of Appeals.
At a “Conversations with Conservatives” meeting last week at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., the panelists, including Gohmert, were asked about the federal judge in Oklahoma who ruled on Jan. 14 that the state’s prohibition against homosexual “marriage” was unconstitutional. Another federal judge in Utah made a similar ruling in December.
Congressman Gohmert said, “It’s certainly, the Supreme Court said this is a matter for the states to decide. And I know our court a few years ago, the Supreme Court [in the DOMA case] had said that they didn’t, in part, basically they didn’t see any biological evidence to support marriage being between a man and a woman – and, you know, they need some basic plumbing lessons – but the three [cases] that came up that year were turned out. This is a state issue.”
In the Supreme Court ruling (5-4) on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) last June, the five liberal justices said it was unconstitutional to deny federal benefits to same-sex couples. In a separate opinion, the Court declined to hear a case challenging a district-court decision that struck down California’s Proposition 8, which had defined marriage there as being between one man and one woman.
In the Oklahoma case on Jan. 14, U.S. District Judge Terence C. Kern ruled that “Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.” (Kern was nominated to his post in 1994 by President Bill Clinton.) The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby on Dec. 20 in Utah followed the same lines.
President Barack Obama is seen on a monitor in the White House briefing room in Washington, May 9, 2012. President Barack Obama told an ABC interviewer that he supports gay marriage. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
“Applying the law as it is required to do, the court holds that Utah’s prohibition on same-sex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law,” said Judge Shelby, who was nominated to his post by President Barack Obama in 2011. “The State’s current laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in so doing, demean the dignity of these same-sex couples for norational reason. Accordingly, the court finds that these laws are unconstitutional.
Commenting further on the judges who ruled against the state-made prohibitions against homosexual “marriage,” Rep. Gohmert said, “And it’s up to the states to define, according to the Supreme Court. So for one omnipotent, omnicious, ubiquitous federal judge, who is wise beyond his education, to say, to make such a declaration about the law, I think requires revisiting by each state and compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“This cannot continue like one of the 9th Circuit judges reportedly said, that, ‘well, we know we’re not doing in accordance with Supreme Court precedent, but they can’t reverse all of our [decisions] so we’ll keep cranking them out.’” Said Gohmert.
The congressman continued, “We gotta’ get back to real law and order and that includes by judges not becoming God in their place. You know, the joke sometime has too much realism: How many federal judges does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One. They hold it and the universe revolves around them. That stuff’s gotta’ stop. We’ve got to get the law back in the hands of the state where it was originally intended in a federalist republic.” CNS