Christian conservative group that tried to overturn marriage equality vows that it’s not over

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Liberty Counsel, the Christian hate group behind Kim Davis’s attempt to have the Supreme Court overturn its marriage equality decision, says their fight to end LGBTQ+ equality is far from over.

“I have no doubt that Davis’s resolve will serve as a catalyst to raise up many more challenges to the wrongly decided Obergefell opinion,” wrote Liberty Counsel President Mat Staver in a message on the group’s website. “Until then, we must pray, fight, and contend for when Obergefell is no longer the law of the land.”

The Supreme Court ruled in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that people have a fundamental right to choose who to marry, regardless of their spouse’s gender. The decision legalized marriage equality in all 50 states.

A county clerk in Kentucky, Kim Davis, refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which led to a lawsuit and ten years of legal fights.

This year, with help from the lawyers at Liberty Counsel, she filed an appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn a judgment against her that required her to pay $360,000 to a gay couple whom she had illegally denied a marriage license. In that petition, she asked the Supreme Court to end marriage equality, arguing that her case proved that LGBTQ+ equality was inherently a threat to the rights of Christians like herself.

Last week, the Supreme Court rejected her appeal, leaving its decision in favor of marriage rights in place for at least another year.

Anti-LGBTQ+ activists, though, aren’t going to give up.

“This time, Kim Davis is the victim of religious animus and is being deprived of her constitutional freedom of religion,” Staver wrote. “Tomorrow, it could be you.”

“This may mark the end of an era in litigating Davis’s case, but the fight to overturn Obergefell and protect religious liberty has just begun.”

Staver’s argument is similar to an argument that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito made in 2020 that the mere existence of married same-sex couples is a violation of Christians’ religious freedom because seeing married same-sex couples encourages people to judge Christians “as bigots.” (That opinion was delivered in the context of a different appeal filed by Davis.)

“Since Obergefell, parties have continually attempted to label people of good will as bigots merely for refusing to alter their religious beliefs in the wake of prevailing orthodoxy,” Thomas wrote at the time.