The upcoming ruling by the US Supreme Court determining the legality of same-sex marriage is not expected until late June, but the fall-out from a projected win for gay-rights activists has already begun.
Right-wing pundit and one-time UN ambassador Alan Keyes claimed this week that the country is headed for civil war if the Supreme Court rules in favor of gay marriage.
Writing in a column for WorldNetDaily, Keyes said: “This would be an attack on the people of the United States more grievous than that which led the first generation of Americans to declare their independence from Great Britain.
“If even a significant minority of Americans continue in their attachment to the unalienable right of liberty (as opposed to the licentious freedom that has, in some quarters usurped that name), this attack is likely to produce the separation and dissolution of the United States, for, like humanity itself, the United States is inconceivable apart from respect for God-endowed unalienable right.
“It is only after much thought that I venture to say that the Supreme Court’s decisions could very well be as momentous as the Dred Scott decision in the 19th century, and just as fraught with potentially fatal implications for the future Liberty and Union of the people of the United States.”
While Keyes is not stranger to controversy, his comments represent a new low in provocative instigation as the Republican used threats to stir the cauldron of discontent among his conservative contemporaries and egg them on to violent disobedience.
Without specific numbers or substantiation for his statements, Keyes continued: “Many Americans feel that this is so. But when it comes to constitutional law, our feelings cannot be the crux of the matter. Rather we must rely, as the young Abraham Lincoln once said, on ‘Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned.’”
Making Keyes’ inflammatory statements that much more sensational, the likely presidential candidate has a daughter who defines herself as lesbian. As a teenager, she involved herself in her father’s political work, actively campaigning for pro-school choice and the pro-life movement. According to her website, Maya Jeane Marcel-Keyes believes in the philosophy of “peace for all who live,” opposing the death penalty, abortion, war, and the killing of animals for consumption. Maya, who is a vegan, states she is an anarchist, and believes that health care, education, food, jobs, and housing are basic human rights.
When her father discovered her sexual orientation, he fired her from his staff in his 2004 Senate race and requested that she vacate her politically funded Chicago apartment. The two are alleged to still be at odds.
The 64-year-old Keyes ran for President in 1996, 2000, and 2008. The Republican was appointed Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations by President Ronald Reagan. Additionally, Keyes served as Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987.
Meanwhile, right-wing pundit and neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson has been placed on the Extremist List of Southern Poverty Law Center for his views on same-sex marriage as a plot by the New World Order to impose communism. Additionally, Carson, who is also expected to enter the Republican presidential race next year, has compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophiles.
In their efforts to draw attention away from the law and into the court of public opinion, both Republicans have moved dangerous close to hate rhetoric where the Supreme Court and same-sex marriage is concerned. It is time for the megaphone of the politic soapbox to remove itself from taking cheap shots in the name of freedom, and prepare to defend their positions on the public electoral stage.
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