Rep. Steve King Wants Congress to Denounce Supreme Court's Marriage Equality Ruling

The right-wing Iowa rep wants Congress to vote on the matter, even though such a resolution would have no practical effect.

While Congress has much to do as it returns from its Independence Day recess, right-wing U.S. Rep. Steve King wants it to spend some time symbolically denouncing the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.

The Iowa Republican is writing and plans to introduce a nonbinding resolution signaling opposition to the ruling, even though the resolution would have no practical effect, he told The Washington Post Monday afternoon. “We should bring it to the floor and have a debate and let people register their positions,” he said.

He also said such a debate would be a way to tease out Republican presidential aspirants’ views. King said he’s seen “a good number of tepid responses” from the presidential field on the matter. Actually, all the major GOP candidates have said they oppose the ruling, the Post notes, but some — including Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, and Lindsey Graham — have said it’s time to accept it and move on.

Despite his oft-voiced opposition to marriage equality and LGBT rights in general, King told the Post that if same-sex marriage were legalized through the legislative process, that would be more acceptable than the high court’s decision.

“If the state legislatures were to pass laws that established same-sex marriage in the states and if they established reciprocity from the other states, that would be the voice of the public making this decision,” he said. “What I reject is an activist court with no basis for this decision transforming the greatest civilization we’ve ever seen by a 5-to-4 decision.”

He further said Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan should have recused themselves from the marriage equality case because they had officiated same-sex weddings. Without them, “it would have been a 4-to-3 decision the other way,” he said.

King has already introduced a piece of legislation aimed at undermining the court’s authority — in April he filed the Restrain the Judges on Marriage Act of 2015, which would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over marriage. So far it has gone nowhere, and it isn’t likely to; the independent government-monitoring website GovTrack gives it a 3 percent chance of becoming law.