SCR 3 (LSB 1726XS (5) 91)

SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION NO. 3

BY  SALMON

A Concurrent Resolution relating to the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges.

   WHEREAS, the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), is at odds with the Constitution of the United States and the principles upon which the United States is established; and
   WHEREAS, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement; and
   WHEREAS, Obergefell invokes a definition of liberty that the framers would not have recognized, rejecting the idea captured in the Declaration of Independence that human dignity is innate, and instead suggesting that liberty comes from the government; and
   WHEREAS, when the framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”, the framers referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth; and
   WHEREAS, Obergefell undermines this vision by declaring that citizens must seek dignity from the state; and
   WHEREAS, Obergefell relies on the dangerous fiction of treating the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States as a font of substantive rights, a doctrine that strays from the full meaning of the Constitution of the United States and exalts judges at the expense of the people from whom they derive their authority; and
   WHEREAS, Obergefell’s inversion of the original meaning of liberty causes collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty, including religious liberty; and
   WHEREAS, the Supreme of the United States recognized in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013), that the definition of marriage is “an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States”, meaning that Iowa, and not the Supreme Court of the United States, has the right to regulate marriage for Iowa citizens; and
   WHEREAS, Obergefell requires states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages in complete contravention of their own state constitutions, state statutes, including Iowa Code section 595.2, and the will of state voters, thus undermining the civil liberties of those states’ residents and voters; and
   WHEREAS, marriage as an institution has been recognized as the union of one man and one woman for more than 2,000 years, and within common law, the basis of the United States’ Anglo-American legal tradition, for more than 800 years; and
   WHEREAS, Obergefell arbitrarily and unjustly rejected this definition of marriage in favor of a novel, flawed interpretation of key clauses within the Constitution of the United States and our nation’s legal and cultural precedents; and
   WHEREAS, since court rulings are not laws and only legislatures elected by the people may pass laws, Obergefell is an illegitimate overreach; NOW, THEREFORE,

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE, THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES CONCURRING, That the General Assembly of the State of Iowa rejects the decision of Obergefell v. Hodges; and

   BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the General Assembly of the State of Iowa calls upon the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse the Obergefell decision, and restore the natural definition of marriage, a union of one man and one woman; and
   BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the General Assembly of the State of Iowa insists on restoring the issue of marriage and enforcement of all laws pertaining to marriage back to the several states and the people; and
   BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That copies of this concurrent resolution shall be distributed to the Supreme Court of the United States.