Bob Vander Plaats of The Family Leader
is proud of his role in ousting three Iowa Supreme Court justices
over their participation in the court's unanimous 2009 ruling which
brought gay marriage to the Midwest.
The court's Varnum v. Brein
decision angered social conservatives, who mounted a successful 2010
campaign to oust three of the justices. Vander Plaats led the effort
to punish the justices. However, a subsequent campaign last year to
vote a fourth justice off the bench failed. And this year, the
Republican-led House ignored his group's calls to approve a
constitutional amendment which would reverse the law by defining
marriage as a heterosexual union.
Earlier this week, conservative radio
host Steve Deace and Vander Plaats, an unsuccessful 2010 candidate
for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, launched the Lead
or Get Out of The Way campaign, a weekly 30 minute discussion
of how conservatives can lead in their local communities.
Deace said that the justices were fired
because they assumed God's authority.
The justices were not fired “because
of criminal malfeasance or negligence or a personal scandal but
because they essentially said, your state supreme court said, 'We are
God,'” Deace said. “'We can undo what God has brought together.
… We can redefine marriage. We can amend the constitution as we
see fit.'”
“The people fired those three
justices because the founders gave the power of the king to the
people. And so when you have an unelected body, like supreme court
justices saying, 'You know, I'm going to lead, 'cause you guys aren't
going to lead, so I'm going to lead.' That's what they did. So they
led and they led contrary to the way we wanted them to lead. So now
we had to inspire the people to say join the movement and let's hold
these three accountable. And they did. And everybody told us, 'It's
never happened before. It'll never happen now.' And by 8 percentage
points all three justices went down.”