Russell Moore (no relation to Roy Moore), the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, as reported in the Christian Examiner, “says Alabama judges who in good conscience cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, should resign instead of fighting the law while in office.”

What if judges in Germany refused to approve legal orders to transport Jews to death camps? What if they just resigned? Would that have been enough? A resignation would only mean that a new judge would be appointed who would comply with the order.

A line has to be drawn somewhere.

Russell Moore went on to say that Judge Moore should fight the law as a private citizen. More than 81 percent of the people in Alabama voted to pass a law denying the right of same-sex couples to marry. The fight was done at the private citizen level, and it was successful. It’s up to the civil officials in Alabama to enforce it against an unelected tyranny. A civil official is best suited to fight a civil issue.

Here’s how the Declaration of Independence states it:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Judge Moore and the state of Alabama are securing those rights. They are “governments . . .  instituted among Men.”

There is no reason for Judge Moore to resign, as Russell Moore argues, since he is following the law. He is not violating either 1 Peter 2:13 or Romans 13:1 since he is a government official with governing authority under the authority of the governor who supports him.

Why hasn’t there been a call for Judge Granade to resign if she disagrees with the law as it is in Alabama and as it was in more than 30 other states until judges overruled the state rulings?

Judge Moore is questioning the action by a single judge whose ruling overturned the voting decision of 81 percent of the people who in 2006 voted to add the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment to the Alabama Constitution. That amendment is a law in the state of Alabama. Judge Moore took an oath to uphold the Alabama Constitution.

Judge Moore pointed out that “the same Court that ruled in 2013 that marriage should be a state, not a federal matter, is now imposing a federal definition of marriage on a state.”

Read: Rights Don’t Come from God’ CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo Proclaims as He Attacks Chief Justice Roy Moore

The people and the legislature followed proper legal procedure. They followed the law. Justice Moore makes it clear that since the United States Constitution does not mention marriage in any away, the state of Alabama is within its constitutional rights to rule on the marriage question based on the wording of the Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Interestingly, Judge Moore’s actions are not being described as lawless by others. Emily Bazelon at the New York Times agreed with Chief Justice Roy Moore about the “process” of the law:

“District-court rulings, even if they’re about important matters of policy, usually affect only the people involved in the case in question,” she wrote. “They don’t typically make law for an entire state; that responsibility falls to a state’s highest court, or a federal appeals court — in this case the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit — or eventually the Supreme Court, which makes law for the country.”

“But in the case of Granade’s ruling on the gay-marriage ban, both the federal appeals court and the Supreme Court have stood aside,” the NYT article continued, “leaving Granade in the highly unusual position of remaking law and policy for the entire state of Alabama.”

One more point, was U.S. District Court Judge Callie Granade influenced in her decision because her son may be a homosexual?