Huckabee expects civil disobedience in response to SCOTUS gay marriage ruling

Dylan StablefordSenior editorJune 28, 2015

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Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee slammed the Supreme Court’s historic ruling on same-sex marriage, suggesting Christians will have no choice but resort to civil disobedience in order to follow their faith.

“This case wasn’t so much about a matter of marriage equality, it was marriage redefinition,” Huckabee said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” Sunday. “And I think people have to say, ‘If you’re going to have a new celebration that we’re not going to discriminate [against], may I ask, are we going to now discriminate against people of conscience, people of faith who may disagree with this ruling?’”

The 2016 Republican presidential hopeful was asked if he was recommending those who disagree with the court’s decision engage in “civil disobedience.”

“I don’t think a lot of pastors and Christian schools are going to have a choice,” Huckabee said. “They either are going to follow God, their conscience and what they truly believe is what the scripture teaches them, or they will follow civil law. They will go the path of Dr. Martin Luther King, who in his brilliant essay the 'Letter from a Birmingham jail’ reminded us, based on what St. Augustine said, that an unjust law is no law at all.”

Huckabee said Christian county clerks should be excused from issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

“If they have a conscientious objection, I think they should be excused,” he said. “I’m not sure that every governor and every attorney general should just say, 'Well, it’s the law of the land because there’s no enabling legislation.’”

Huckabee argued that liberals would do the same if the tables were eventually turned.

“If we get a future court that is conservative and that conservative court decides that this was a mistake and we’re going to go back to traditional marriage and we’re also going to say that every unborn [person] is, in fact, a person and is absolutely guaranteed due process and therefore we would strike down the idea of abortion from conception forward,” he said, “is the left going to be OK to let the Supreme Court make that decision?”

Huckabee launches his 2016 bid in May. (Photo: Mike Stone/Reuters)

He added: “When the president lit up the White House the other night with rainbow colors, I guess that’s his prerogative. If I become president, I just want to remind people: Please don’t complain if I were to put a nativity scene out during Christmas and say, you know, 'If it’s my house, I get to do with it what I wish despite what other people around the country may feel about it.’”

Of course, Huckabee isn’t the only 2016 hopeful speaking out on the issue.

“My view of marriage is based on my Christian faith — no earthly court’s decision is going to change that,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “I think it is wrong for the federal government to force Christian individuals, businesses, pastors, churches to participate in wedding ceremonies that violate our sincerely held religious beliefs. We have to stand up and fight for religious liberty. That’s where this fight is going.”

“The only alternative left for the American people is to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to reaffirm the ability of the states to continue to define marriage,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said in a statement Friday.

But South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said that would be a mistake.

“You can put it in the platform, but it will, in my view, hurt us in 2016, because it’s a process that’s not going to bear fruit,” Graham said. “What I want to do is protect the religious liberties of those who believe that opposing same-sex marriage is part of their faith. So no, I would not engage in the constitutional amendment process as a party going into 2016. Accept the court’s ruling, fight for the religious liberties of every American.

"If I’m president of the United States, here’s what would happen,” Graham said. 'If you have a church, a mosque, or a synagogue, and you’re following your faith, and you refuse to perform a same-sex marriage, because it’s outside the tenets of your faith. In my presidency you will not lose your tax-exempt status. If you’re a gay person or a gay couple, if I’m president of the United States, you will be able to participate in commerce and be a full member of society, consistent with the religious beliefs of others who have rights also.“

On CNN’s "State of the Union,” Donald Trump was pressed about his support of “traditional marriage” when two of his ended in divorce.

“What do you say to a lesbian who’s married, or a gay man who is married, who says, 'Donald Trump, what’s traditional about being married three times?’” Jake Tapper asked Trump in an interview that aired Sunday but was conducted ahead of the Supreme Court’s ruling Friday.

The Republican presidential candidate conceded they would “have a very good point.”

Trump said his first two wives “were very good” but he was too busy building his real estate business.

“I don’t blame them, but I was working … 22 hours a day,” he said.

The atrocities committed by the terror group ISIS are so horrific that a high-profile al Qaeda member, an American citizen, purportedly addressed the group directly in a new al Qaeda publication and lectured them that if they keep it up, Allah will not grant them paradise in the afterlife.

“My dear brothers: While no one can deny the considerable strength and prowess of the Islamic State group [ISIS] in military terms, at the same time, the crimes it has committed against Muslims cannot simply be overlooked or forgotten with time, because in Islam there is no statute of limitations,” the late Adam Gadahn said, according to an al Qaeda magazine published recently online. “And if these wrongs are not brought to an end and rectified here in this world, then a severe punishment has been promised both for those who committed them as well as those who encouraged, condoned or justified them, even if from behind a computer or mobile phone thousands of miles away.”

Gadahn, born Adam Pearlman, was killed accidentally in an American counter-terrorism operation in January, according to the White House. Apparently the U.S. forces who conducted the mission didn’t know Gadahn was at the target location. Another al Qaeda member said in the magazine that it was an airstrike that killed Gadahn.

The interview with Gadahn, in which he discusses his background as a California boy in an unorthodox home and his bizarre journey into the ranks of al Qaeda, appears to have been conducted last fall. A majority of the 80-plus page interview is dedicated to sharp criticism of ISIS, the terror group that split from al Qaeda in recent years and one that Gadahn says “is already known to be responsible for the murder and killing of a large number of Muslims on the flimsiest of pretexts.”

“Does anyone think [Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda figures] were calling on them to bring the wrath of the entire world down on Iraq and Syria by attacking and displacing largely powerless and defenseless minorities and slaughtering their men and enslaving their women and children?... Of course not!” he said. “Frankly, all of us used to be sympathetic to varying degrees towards the Islamic State of Iraq [ISIS] -- despite its mistakes –- when it was seen as a weak and oppressed force valiantly fighting brutal tyrannies. But now that it has become clear that it has – unfortunately – adopted some of the traits, methods and tactics of those same tyrannies, it no longer holds the same place in our hearts that it did once upon a time.”

Early last week ISIS released its most gruesome video yet -– one showing the execution of a dozen fighters, some purportedly members of al Qaeda’s Syria faction. Different groups of the men are drowned, blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade or decapitated with explosives. Friday an ISIS affiliate claimed responsibility for the bombing of a mosque inKuwait, which killed 27 Muslim worshippers.

In addition to the mass killing of Muslims, Gadahn also took issue with ISIS’s on-camera murder of Alan Henning, a British humanitarian. Henning was one of a string of Western hostages, including three Americans, to be executed by ISIS. Gadahn claimed that al Qaeda went as far as demanding ISIS release Henning because he was an aid worker.

“…[T]he brothers in An-Nusra [al Qaeda’s faction in Syria] sought the release of Henning soon after his kidnapping, but regrettably, their appeals – like the rest – fell on deaf ears,” Gadahn said. “Alan Henning didn’t go to Syria as a soldier or a spy. He went to Syria as a member of a Muslim aid convoy to distribute relief supplies to displaced and needy Syrians. But rather than thank him, some interlopers rewarded him first by kidnapping him and then by slaughtering him on camera.”

But Gadahn's sympathetic words are out of place compared to other parts of the interview, where the American celebrated the attacks on Canadian soldiers and the Canadian Parliament, and later described his jubilant reaction to the 9/11 attacks in which his organization killed 3,000 innocent Americans.

“It was a mix of surprise, amazement and exhilaration as well as some apprehension, at least in the beginning,” he said. Gadahn said he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan when it happened and that night “there was a celebratory atmosphere… People were congratulating each other on this incredible and historic victory with which Allah had favored us.”

And like ISIS, Gadahn also called for attacks in Western countries.

“We in al Qaeda have been consistent in calling for attacks on America and its Crusader allies,” he said.

Batumi (Georgia) (AFP) - A US warship arrived Sunday in Georgia's Black Sea port of Batumi on a training mission, the US embassy said, sending a message of support to the NATO aspirant amid the conflict in Ukraine.

The US 6th Fleet's guided missile destroyer USS Laboon "will conduct routine combined training with the Georgian Coast Guard," the US embassy in Tbilisi said.

The port call "reaffirms the United States' commitment to strengthening ties with NATO allies and partners like Georgia, while working toward mutual goals of promoting security and stability in the Black Sea region," the embassy said in a statement.

Moscow's seizure of Crimea from Kiev's rule and its support for Ukrainian rebels have alarmed Georgia, which fought and lost a brief war with Russia in 2008.

The Ukraine crisis has triggered the worst confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War, and the US said last week it would deploy heavy weapons in central and eastern Europe in a move that angered Moscow.

Georgia's bid to join NATO and the European Union infuriated its former imperial master Russia, which bitterly opposes the alliance's expansion into former Soviet republics.

US warships delivered humanitarian aid to Georgia in the wake of the Russia-Georgia conflict in August 2008.

Moscow criticised the decision to send the sophisticated warships, saying they were unsuitable for aid missions.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish police used water cannons and tear gas against gay pride marchers trying to rally in Istanbul's central square on Sunday, forcing the thousands of demonstrators to gather several blocks away. Two people were injured, according to the Dogan news agency.

Between 100 and 200 protesters were chased away from Taksim Square as they began gathering in the late afternoon. Police hemmed the demonstrators into a small corner of the square and then fired several jets of water to force them down a side street.

Within minutes, the noisy but otherwise peaceful rally restarted a few blocks away and grew to several thousand people as the day wore on. An Associated Press reporter at the scene occasionally smelled tear gas, but there didn't appear any further attempt by police to interfere with the protest. The protest broke up around nightfall as many headed to local bars to celebrate.

Organizers said in a statement that the local authority prevented the rally from gathering at Taksim, a traditional focal point for protests, because it coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Turkey does not ban homosexuality, although homophobia remains widespread.