By David Tulis

Tennesseans have great reason to be dissatisfied — even angry — at high officials in state government. The fault is their lapse in government, their unwillingness to represent the interests of the people as regards marriage and the unborn.

The first lapse occurred 32 years ago, in 1973, when the high court ruled in Roe vs. Wade that the federal constitution envisions a right to destroy unborn boys and girls before birth. Gov. Winfield Dunn at most whimpered.

The second occurred June 26 when the judicial division of the general government in Washington, D.C., issued the opinion Obergefell v. Hodges, redefining marriage as to include Jim-Joe and Sarah-Samantha unions.

The supreme court of the U.S. in its opinion is understood to have demolished Tennessee’s constitutional government on the point of marriage, to have eviscerated its constitutional amendment for marriage and the follow-up statutory language declaring marriage as being between one man and one woman.

Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican and an elder in a branch of the Presbyterian church, and his attorney general stood united not in indignation and resistance, but in impotence. His chief legal scribe, Herbert Slatery 3rd, made a most niggardly statement of complaint, and dismissed the matter from the public’s mind.

“Today’s United States Supreme Court decision not only changes the definition of marriage,” he said June 26, “but takes from the states and their citizens the longstanding authority to vote and decide what marriage means.”

Compulsion and compliance

Trying to account for the state’s loss of dignity and democratic vitality, he said, “To the Tennessee citizen who asks ‘Don’t we get a chance to vote on this in some way?’ the answer from the supreme court is a resounding, ‘No, you do not.’ For the court to tell all Tennesseans that they have no voice, no right to vote, on these issues is disappointing. The court, nevertheless, has spoken and we respect its decision.”

Mr. Slatery and his tribe of attorneys in 95 counties respectfully, antiseptically, says his office is “prepared *** take the necessary steps to implement the decision.”

County clerks in Tennessee’s counties, to the last soul, have complied with this abdication of legal and political responsibility, according to Rick Womick, the state’s leading champion of marriage in the general assembly. Among them: Bill Knowles of Hamilton County, a professing Christian and a member at Woodland Park Baptist church.

Mr. Womick, an airline pilot who served in the federal air force and the father of four, represents Rutherford County, between Nashville and Chattanooga.

As are you and other defenders of Christendom and local economy, he is stricken at the refusal of Tennessee and its elected officials to stand upon their oaths of office and the implied commitment therein to constitutional and republican government. Mr. Womick is, indeed, heartbroken.

Mr. Womick sent letters to each of the 95 county clerks in the state, urging each of them to ignore Obergefell and “to uphold their oath to our state constitution and state law, and encouraging them to issue marriage licenses to one man and one woman only.”

Mr. Womick rightly insists that the oath of office, made before the God of the holy scriptures, is a means of guaranteeing a free people served by what the Tennessee constitution calls “free government.” An oath evokes God’s wrath on any taker of the oath who ignores God’s role in guaranteeing its fulfillment.

“Each of Tennessee’s County Clerks are publicly elected servants of their county. They are held accountable only to the people that elected them and to their oath of office,” Mr. Womick says in a statement July 28, “not to the SCOTUS, Gov. Haslam or Attorney General *** Slatery.”

‘No basis in law’

Mr. Womick explains the lawful position of resistance to an illicit opinion that has been converted by Messrs. Slatery and Haslam into a law.

Tennessee’s 95 clerks, should they choose to ignore the opinion of the 5 SCOTUS justices, will not be in violation of any federal law.  As most Americans and Tennesseans understand and recognize, the SCOTUS 5-4 split decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, issued an opinion with no basis in the constitution, the 14th amendment, American law, or 2,000 years of Western history, purporting to overturn natural marriage.  Additionally, the Supreme Court decision did not declare marriage between one man and one woman unconstitutional.  Rather, these five justices “legislated from the bench,” a false “right” or “unconstitutional law” to same sex marriage, a power they do not possess under the U.S. constitution and one which only belongs only to the legislative branches of the federal government or state governments.

Mr. Womick’s resolution cites a fundamental of constitutional law, that of delegated federal power. That authority not explicitly granted to the federal power is reserved to the states and their people.s

Since Gov. Haslam and AG Slatery have refused to uphold the integrity of our state constitution, have failed to defend our state sovereignty as guaranteed by the 9th and 10th amendments to the U.S. constitution, and have instead chosen to support the illegitimacy of same sex marriage, I am calling upon all Tennessee county clerks to ignore the judicial tyranny of the five self serving SCOTUS justices.  It is time for all elected officials to listen to the people who elected us and to uphold the rule of law in Tennessee!

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