Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS

Local elections matter – and nowhere is this more apparent than in the states whose governors and attorneys general are fighting recent attempts to foist sexual immorality upon the general population.

Writing for LifeSiteNews, Father Mark Hodges is reporting on a new bill introduced in Michigan which calls upon state officials to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges which imposed same-sex marriage on the nation.

Introduced by state Representative Tom Hooker (R), Resolution 17 states that the decision is illegitimate because the Constitution is silent on the issue of marriage, which means it’s a matter that is left to the states under the Tenth Amendment. The resolution urges the Governor and all executive officers to “reclaim this state’s sovereignty by not recognizing or enforcing” it.

Other state legislators are taking similar actions, such as in Tennessee where Rep. Rick Womick (R) wrote a letter saying the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell is unenforceable because it seeks to invalidate established Tennessee law.

“They don’t have the power. Only Congress and state legislators have that power to create law,” Rep. Womick said. “Clerks, by ignoring the opinion, will be in violation of no federal law. All they’re in violation of is the opinion of individuals in black robes. . . . We will not be controlled by an oligarchy of five individuals in black robes.”

The state of Alabama is taking similar action, only it is proposing to get out of the marriage licensing business altogether and would simply register marriages after they have taken place.

Mike Maharrey, national communications director for the Tenth Amendment Center, told LifeSiteNews that the federal government “has absolutely no say in that whatsoever. It’s basically an end-around.”

Legal battles are also heating up over the issue of transgender “rights” which allow people to use whatever bathroom fits a person’s perceived – rather than biological – gender.

Representatives from the states of Maine, North Carolina, South Caroline, Arizona, Mississippi and West Virginal have filed a “friend of the court” brief against allowing boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms.

The brief was submitted to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of a teenage girl named Caitlyn Hope Grimm who decided she was a boy and started calling herself “Gavin”. With the help of the ACLU, she is suing with the hopes of forcing school districts throughout the U.S. to allow girls to use boys’ bathrooms, and vice versa.

“The Obama administration has filed an opposing brief with the court, saying that Title IX federal tax funding requires schools to permit students to use the facilities of their choice, not their genes,” reports Fr. Hodges. “President Obama’s team argues that to limit a biological girl to using only the girls’ restroom and showers constitutes sexual discrimination.”

However, the states argue that the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX incorrectly broadens the definition of a person’s biological sex to his or her self-chosen gender identity.

“Sex is a biological reality, unlike subjective or cultural constructions of gender or gender identity,” the brief points out.

The brief also cites a 1996 case where the Supreme Court struck down the exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Academy saying that room should be given to institutions to treat the sexes differently where warranted by biology.

Leaders from the states say the people, not the courts, should enact such a major societal change as allowing people to use restrooms based on their perceived gender.

The bottom line is that the people we elect to serve in our state governments are extremely important. It is only because we have so many pro-life majorities in the nation’s state houses that we have been able to pass record numbers of laws restricting abortion during the eight-year tenure of the most pro-abortion administration in American history.

Our state government leaders are now in the vanguard in the culture wars and are the only force preventing a reckless freefall into abject immorality.

© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com