In a nation increasingly divided over moral truth, the Supreme Court’s latest refusal to revisit its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage marks not only a legal development but a spiritual crisis. According to the Associated Press, the justices “rejected a call to overturn its landmark decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide,” refusing an appeal from former Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis — a woman who once stood firmly for her faith in defiance of the state.
Davis, who famously refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds, has now been ordered to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to one of the couples she denied. “Refusing to respect the constitutional rights of others does not come without consequences,” said Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson, according to the AP. Yet for millions of Christians, the deeper question remains: what happens when the “constitutional rights of others” directly contradict the moral law of God?
Justice Clarence Thomas has previously described the Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges as a threat to religious liberty. He remains, according to the AP, “alone among the nine justices” still calling for the decision to be erased. His warning has proven prophetic. Christians like Kim Davis have become symbols of conscience under fire, punished not for hatred, but for fidelity to Scripture and natural law.
The AP also notes that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, though critical of past judicial errors such as the now-overturned Roe v. Wade, “suggested recently that same-sex marriage might be in a different category… because people have relied on the decision when they married and had children.” That reasoning reflects how cultural acceptance has hardened into a kind of civic religion, one that treats past sin as too socially ingrained to correct.
But Catholics must remember that God’s truth is not subject to majority vote or judicial precedent. Marriage, as the Catechism teaches, is a covenant between one man and one woman, ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation of children. No human authority, not even the Supreme Court, can redefine what God has ordained from the beginning: “Male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27).
Kim Davis’s story is not about discrimination; it is about witness. She “turned away same-sex couples, saying her faith prevented her from complying with the high court ruling,” according to the AP. For this, she was jailed for contempt in 2015. She lost her re-election bid in 2018, but her courage remains a reminder that moral truth is often costly.
The Supreme Court’s silence on this issue, its refusal even to comment, speaks volumes about the moral confusion of our age. As Christians, we are called not to conform to the patterns of this world (Romans 12:2), but to transform it with the light of truth.
The Court may have closed its doors to Kim Davis’s appeal, but the debate over marriage is far from over. The faithful must continue to defend God’s design for marriage — not out of animosity, but out of love for souls and for the sanctity of the family, the cornerstone of society.
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