The National Organization for Marriage
(NOM) is calling on Republican Governor Sam Brownback, a strong
opponent of marriage equality, to ignore a ruling striking down the
state's ban on gay marriage.
Gay and lesbian couples started
marrying in Kansas on Thursday, a day after the Supreme Court refused
to stay a lower court's ruling declaring the ban invalid.
(Related: Kansas
officials fight implementation of gay marriage ruling.)
“These lower court decisions are
illegitimate,” NOM President Brian Brown said in a blog post.
“They violate the overarching constitutional principle that powers
not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to
the states. The US Supreme Court has specifically recognized in the
Windsor case that the regulation of marriage has always been a
state function, and this remains so. Therefore, we call on Governor
Sam Brownback to reject the idea that Kansas must abandon marriage
because out of control federal judges say so.”
“The question for the people of
Kansas, and indeed the nation, is whether we are going to allow an
illegitimate order by federal judges to trump state law and the vote
of 70% of the Kansas electorate. Fifty million Americans in over
thirty states have voted in support of traditional marriage and it's
time that states fight back to protect the decision of those voters,”
he added.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the
nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, criticized the move.
“So now, instead of continuing to
defend these marriage bans in court, NOM has instead decided the best
strategy moving forward is for anti-equality governors to simply
ignore the federal courts that rule the bans unconstitutional,” the
group said. “As it turns out, the U.S. Constitution rather
clearly spells out the powers vested in the federal judiciary and
nowhere does it say state governors can ignore federal court rulings
because they don't like them.”