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Lawmaker Calling For State To Stop Issuing Marriage Licenses: ‘God Didn’t Create Adam And Winston’

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A Tennessee Republican still waging war on same-sex marriage issues threat days before Christmas.

Even though six months have passed since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, there are still pockets of resistance across America. 

Take Tennessee, which has a task force created to study and recommend how the State should respond to the historic ruling.

Although the tsk force has been meeting regularly, it has yet to issue a recommendation, but that hasn’t stopped Tennessee Republican state Rep. Rick Womick from issuing an opinion.

“The state Constitution says that marriage is between one man and one woman, and my personal belief is that God says that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Womick told the Daily News Journal. “He created Adam and Eve. God didn’t create Adam and Winston.”

Womick says, in resonse to the Supreme Court ruling, the State of Tennessee should stop issuing marriage licenses, period.

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“That would take the state out of the marriage business altogether,” says Womick, who, after the June marriage ruling in Obergefell sent an official letter on his State House office stationery to all 95 county clerks telling them to “ignore the recent SCOTUS opinion redefining marriage, uphold our State Constitution, and issue marriage certificates to one man and one woman only.”

Womick insists marriage “is a state-sovereignty issue,” and the U.S. Supreme Court justces “have no business ruling on it to begin with. What we have up there is an oligarchy of five individuals declaring their will on the rest of the country.”

“If the Supreme Court will not allow us as a sovereign state to issue marriage licenses as we have decided, then we won’t issue them at all,” Womick said. “If [the deciding five members of the Supreme Court] want to play this game, we are not going to abide by what they said,” he added.

“The Supreme Court is not going to force the state of Tennessee to issue same-sex marriage licenses. We’ll just stop issuing marriage licenses period. You can’t force us to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples or to men or women.”

Womick, who co-sponsored a bill establishing the Bible as the Official State Book, did not offer a solution to couples who wish to marry and be able to prove their union is legal, which affects their ability to access over 1100 federal benefits.

 

Image: Screenshot via YouTube

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News

DeSantis Busted by Florida Paper Over ‘Horrific’ Abortion Debate Tale

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On Saturday morning the Miami Herald called out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for a story he told during Wednesday’s Republican Party debate about an abortion where he got the facts entirely wrong in order to make his anti-choice point.

At issue was a tale about a woman he called “Penny” who survived an abortion.

The Florida governor told a national TV audience, “I know a lady in Florida named Penny. She survived multiple abortion attempts. She was left discarded in a pan. Fortunately, her grandmother saved her and brought her to another hospital.”

According to the Herald, DeSantis got the story wrong even down to the woman’s name.

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As the Herald’s Julie K. Brown wrote, “Critics of the governor flocked to social media to suggest the “Penny” story was made up or wildly embellished. Supporters countered that liberals were triggered by an ugly truth.”

She continued, “Penny is real and her last name is Hopper. But DeSantis failed to note key details from her remarkable story: The person who tried to end Penny’s life in the womb was not a doctor or even an illegal abortion provider — it was her father. And his effort to abort his daughter with a coat hanger took place almost two decades before the Supreme Court’s seismic Roe v. Wade decision, which established a woman’s right to an abortion.

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Brown added that her debunking of the DeSantis’ story “is based on previous recorded statements made by Hopper, newspaper clippings, public records and an interview with a family member who after speaking to a journalist at length asked not to be identified. She confirmed that Hopper’s version of events has been told in family circles for years.”

You can read more here.

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OPINION

‘Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow’ Didn’t Indict Trump, ‘Regular People’ Did: Fox News Host Destroys ‘Two-Tiered’ Justice Claims

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A Fox News host destroyed conservative claims that Donald Trump‘s criminal indictments show there’s a “two-tiered” system of justice being used against Republicans.

Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal co-host on the conservative cable channel’s popular afternoon show, “The Five,” reminded her right-wing counterparts on Friday that Trump was indicted in four different jurisdictions by “regular people,” while pointing to a new poll that finds majorities of Americans believe he is guilty of the federal crimes he has been charged with and if convicted believe he should be imprisoned.

“Donald Trump was indicted in four jurisdictions around this country, by juries of regular Americans in New York, in D.C., and Atlanta, and in South Florida, where he calls home,” Tarlov said. “This wasn’t Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow sitting there. It was regular people who listened to the evidence that was brought before them.”

READ MORE: ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

“When you say that people are rallying behind him, his diehard base is, but the average American isn’t,” she continued.

“There’s new polling out today. 62% think that he committed a crime, including 67% of independents. 61% think that he must stand trial before the election. Why? Because you don’t want to put someone in office who’s going to jail, and 59% think that the DOJ is being fair.”

“That shoots straight through the argument that this is a ‘two-tiered’ system of justice,” she continued. “If you don’t like that Joe Biden is fundraising off of it, you know, Donald Trump is doing the same thing, he’s having his moment. Mitch McConnell even – remember he fundraised off of ‘Cocaine Mitch.'”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

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OPINION

‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Singer Mocks GOP Candidates After Song Used in Debate: It’s ‘Definitely’ About Them

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Country-folk singer-songwriter Oliver Anthony, who wrote the Billboard number one hit song used in the opening of Wednesday night’s first GOP 2024 presidential debate on Fox News is mocking the Republican candidates on stage for embracing it, revealing for the first time the song is “definitely” written about them.

Declaring that “what makes us strong is our diversity,” Anthony says, “it was funny seeing it at the presidential debate, ’cause it’s like, I wrote that song about those people, you know,” he said with a chuckle.

“So for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up,” Anthony added, laughing a bit more. “But it was funny kind of seeing the response to it, like that song has nothing to do with Joe Biden, you know, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden. That song’s written about the people on that stage and a lot more too, not just them, but definitely them.”

Fox News opened the debate with clips of Americans complaining about inflation and the cost of living, along with a clip of President Joe Biden saying that his economic plan, dubbed Bidenonmics, is working.

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“As we sit here tonight,” Fox News host and debate moderator Martha MacCallum said Wednesday, to cheers and applause from the audience in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “the number one song on the Billboard chart is called ‘Rich Men North of Richmond,'”

“It is by a singer from FarmVille, Virginia named Oliver Anthony. His lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government, and of this country. Washington, D.C. is about 100 miles north of Richmond,” MacCallum concluded before playing a short portion of the song.

“Why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now? What do you think it means?” she asked.

On Thursday, The Washington Post published a short clip of Fox News using the song during the debate, and after, Oliver Anthony, whose actual name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford, talking about himself and his political beliefs.

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“We got to go back to the roots of what made this country great in the first place,” Anthony says, “which was our sense of community and our, I mean, we are the melting pot of the world and that’s what makes us strong is our diversity and we need to learn to harness that, appreciate it, and not use it as a political tool to keep everyone separate from each other.”

“I sit pretty down the center on politics, and always have, it seems like you know, both sides serve the same master and that master is not someone of any good to the people of this country,” he added.

READ MORE: Kellyanne Conway Urges GOP to Attack Abortion as Biden Campaign Releases Ad Pledging to Protect Women’s Rights

Watch the videos of Oliver Anthony above or at this link.

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