Once you’ve said yes, it’s hard to say no. Bureaucrats always begin with no. It’s easier to go to yes from no but almost impossible to go from no to yes. Once you’ve given permission, it’s hard to take it back. Talk to any child.

The states have been saying yes to so many judicial decisions that they don’t know how to say no.

The federal courts have been telling individual states that what’s written in their Constitutions and what people have voted on are null and void. Federal judges have declared that Kentucky and Virginia must acknowledge marriage between people of the same sex. Here’s Kentucky’s constitutional provision:

“Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Kentucky. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized.”

The referendum was approved by 75% of the voters and applies to everybody regardless of gender or sexual proclivities. The “consent of the governed” has spoken loudly in more than 30 states on the same-sex marriage issue

What good are state constitutions if two or three federal judges can nullify any provision? If judges can say one provision is “unconstitutional” based on a legal fiction, what’s to say they can’t do it on other provisions?

United we stand. The courts are picking off states one at a time.

So what can the states do? U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen appealed to the Declaration in striking down Virginia’s anti-same-sex marriage provision. “Allen asked no questions of the five lawyers. . .  It seems clear now that she had already made up her mind from the extensive briefing that came before the hearing.”

So what can these states do? Just say no. The states are governments. They have constitutions and elected representatives.

Judge Allen’s appeal to the Declaration of Independence (mistakenly claiming that it was the Constitution) was written because of the type of tyranny being imposed on the states by judges like Allen.

It’s important to note that every time the issue of same-sex marriage has come before the people, voters have rejected it, even in left-of-center California. Consider this paragraph from the Declaration:

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Like King George of England, these judges have by their rulings “dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people” and suspended “legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.”

The Declaration couldn’t be clearer. Judge Allen has cherry picked the Declaration in order to validate what is a personal opinion about the definition of marriage. David Azerrad writes that that the “claim that equality mandates redefining marriage” is laughable. “The ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God’ countenance ordered liberty, and the husband-and-wife, mother-and-father family is a core institution for securing what the Constitution calls ‘the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.’ What’s more, no one’s core rights are violated if marriage is not redefined to suit their tastes.” Same-sex relationships know nothing of “posterity.”

As I mentioned in a prevision article, the Declaration appeals to the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” as well as “the Supreme Judge of the world.” Marriage is a creation ordinance defined by God. Where are the courts getting their definition of marriage? They’re pulling it out of thin air.

If the definition of marriage can be changed by a whim of law, then anything can be changed.

Douglas Wilson has given a governmental principle rooted in law on what the state governments should do. It’s called the doctrine of the lesser magistrate:

“The legislature of Kentucky, or Virginia, or any other state that this is being done to, should pass a measure requiring the governor to just say no. The governor should sign it, and then inform the feds that he has instructed the clerks of every county court house in the state to refuse to issue any mirage licenses. It doesn’t matter what the federal judge says — we the people of the great state of ‘whichever one it is’ need to become insufficiently docile and compliant.”

This legal approach “has happened elsewhere, on different issues. It is happening now with Washington and Colorado saying that smoking dope is okay with them.” If enough of these states banded together, it would be nearly impossible for the Federal government to do anything to a majority of states that convene to protect their sovereignty. What if the United Nations voted to impose an international income tax? Don’t you think a vast majority of people would say no even if the President, Congress, and the courts went along with it?

It’s time that the states stand up for the principles that this nation was founded upon. Too much blood was shed not to.