Former House Speaker Feigns Ignorance Of Judicial Branch’s Equal Role
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Creator of the “Republican Revolution“, and a man who has spent his entire career working to fundamentally change America, Newt Gingrich Tuesday blasted all seven Iowa Supreme Court Justices who Friday ruled that state’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. Calling their unanimous decision “outrageously wrong,”and “the height of judicial arrogance,” Gingrich further said, “you have seven lawyers who have decided, on their own, to fundamentally change Iowa.”
Gingrich, whom many see as having presidential aspirations in 2012, resigned his House seat in 1998 after Republican losses.
On gay marriage and homosexuality, Gingrich, (who’s half-sister Candace is gay and an LGBT activist,) has come out strongly against gay marriage, gay adoption, and favors a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Nice, huh? Can you imagine the dinner-table conversations at Thanksgiving?
Last year, after widely supporting Prop 8, the former Speaker said to Bill O’Reilly,
“Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And, frank — for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they’re the opposite, of what you’re taught in Sunday school.”
This from the man who has been married three times, was having an affair while prosecuting President Bill Clinton on charges of impeachment, divorced one wife while she was sick in the hospital with cancer to marry another wife with whom he was having an affair. How is it the Right continues to hold up this man as a pillar of anything except hypocrisy and deceit? How is it the Right continues to lower the bar for morality for its leaders, yet tries to raise the bar for ours?
“You have seven lawyers who have decided, on their own, to fundamentally change Iowa.” No, sir. They were appointed by their state’s Governor, to perform a function. A function, a responsibility, a job. They carry equal weight as the Governor and as the Legislature. That’s part of our system of check and balances. That’s part of how democracy works. In our democracy, there are three branches of government, three equal branches. The Legislature creates laws. The Executive, in this case the Governor, approves the laws and is charged with executing them, and the Judiciary is charged with ensuring the laws are just, and in keeping with the greater body of work on which all the laws and dissemination of power is based, the Constitution. Welcome to Civics 101, Mr. Gingrich.
So, getting back to Gingrich’s speech Tuesday at the University of Georgia, about the recent Iowa Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage, the point must be made: seven duly appointed Supreme Court Justices for the state of Iowa looked at their state’s Constitution and determined that, constitutionally, a ban against gay marriage was, in essence, not legal. These are legal scholars charged, as all Supreme Court Justices in our brand of democracy are, with interpreting the Constitution. At the risk of using a religious reference, their job is the same as the Pope’s: to look at the body of work upon which their laws are based and determine what is and is not legal. There is one Pope, but seven Justices; all of whom in the Iowa gay marriage case, determined that banning gay marriage was not possible, not “legal”, based on their Constitution. This is not a case of activist judges. This is, of course, the principle of judicial review. And, less anyone cries partisanship, the Chief Justice of Iowa’s Supreme Court was appointed by a Republican. This is not “the height of judicial arrogance,” Mr. Gingrich, this is how the law works. This is the law.
(photo: wikimedia)