Bob Ellis, leader of the South Dakota
Tea Party Alliance, has attacked the federal judge who struck down
South Dakota's ban on gay marriage.
In a 28-page ruling released Monday,
U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier said gay couples have a
“fundamental right to marry” and that the state's 1996 law and
2006 constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual
unions “deprives them of that right solely because they are
same-sex couples without sufficient justification.”
Schreier stayed her ruling.
(Related: South
Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley to appeal gay marriage ruling.)
In op-ed published Tuesday by
conservative websites BarbWire.com and AmericanClarion.com, Ellis
claimed that Schreier had “taken upon herself to attack the
institution of marriage.”
“United States District Court Judge
Karen E. Schreier, a President Bill Clinton appointee with ties to
former Democrat Senator Tim Johnson, has taken it upon herself to
attack the institution of marriage, the South Dakota Constitution,
and pour contempt on the will of the people of South Dakota who voted
in 2006 to affirm in our state constitution what every civilization
throughout human history has understood instinctively: that marriage
can only be formed by a man and a woman,” Ellis wrote. “This
kind of judicial activism, perversion of the U.S. Constitution
(intended to prevent Democrats from undermining morality and the rule
of law), the South Dakota Constitution, and pure contempt for the
people of South Dakota and our republican form of government (which
does NOT empower judges to make law), should not be allowed to
stand.”
Photos accompanying the piece included
one of two bolts labeled “counterfeit marriage” and one of a bolt
and a nut labeled “real marriage.”