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Rep. Mark Pody is trying to rally support for his bill to nullify marriage equality in Tennessee.
A Tennessee state representative trying to rally support for his bill to nullify marriage equality says he was called by God to stop same-sex marriages and warn sinners so that they can repent.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe I'm supposed to be speaking to the unsaved, to the people that are performing same-sex marriages, to the people involved in same-sex marriage, it is wicked, it is wrong and I am doing the best I can to warn them," said Rep. Mark Pody at a recent event in Nashville. Right Wing Watch posted video of his remarks this week.
Pody and a state senator filed legislation called the Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act in their respective chambers in September. "Natural marriage between one (1) man and one (1) woman as recognized by the people of Tennessee remains the law in Tennessee, regardless of any court decision to the contrary," the bill reads in part. It further states, "Any court decision purporting to strike down natural marriage ... is unauthoritative, void, and of no effect."
"It's unlikely the bill would be found constitutional if passed," Nashville's Tennessean newspaper noted when it was introduced.
Pody, however, claims to be appealing to a higher authority. "The Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being," he declared at the Nashville event, a training session for a group called Tennessee Defy Tyrants. The group, reports The Huffington Post, supports the Doctrine of the Lower Magistrates, which urges defiance of court rulings seen as contrary to God's law.
According to the Lower Magistrates website, Pody's bill has the endorsement of the far-right, antigay legal group Liberty Counsel and its chairman, Mat Staver. A statement from Staver says the bill demonstrates why the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision "is illegitimate and unconstitutional, and provides a framework for successful resistance, provided the political will exists to enact and carry out its provisions." The justices' job, it continues, is to "interpret the law, not create outrageous social policy that ignores the Constitution and millennia of human history."
Watch the clip from Right Wing Watch below, and for Pody's full speech, click here.
