From the moment the Supreme Court delivered its Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in 2015 declaring that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, religious-right attorney Mat Staver has steadfastly refused to accept the decision and vowed to see it overturned.
Shortly after the ruling, Staver, a longtime anti-LGBTQ activist and right-wing conspiracy theorist, seized upon the case of a Kentucky clerk named Kim Davis who was jailed for defying court orders to allow her office to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Staver and his organization Liberty Counsel worked tirelessly to turn Davis into a hero and have spent the last decade defending Davis in court, all with the hope of getting her case before the Supreme Court and using it to overturn the Obergefell ruling.
Last week, after Staver and Liberty Counsel formally petitioned the Supreme Court to hear Davis' case and overturn its 2015 decision, Staver appeared on the Center for Baptist Leadership podcast to discuss the effort.
When asked by former Trump administration official and an ardent Christian nationalist William Wolfe "what's at stake" in this case, Staver declared that Obergefell must be overturned because it is "a cancer" on the Constitution.
"If somebody like Kim, who actually gets an accommodation, can be forced into bankruptcy and persecuted for 10 years, then anybody can," Staver said. "So the religious liberty issue goes far beyond this issue or this case to everybody."
"And finally, Obergefell was wrong," Staver continued. "It damaged the Constitution, it damaged marriage, it damaged the family, it has damaged the country. And the victims like Kim Davis, while she is the first one, she's not the last one. It distorts the very concept of liberty and also objective reality and the natural created order. It has to go. It is a cancer that will infect the rest of the Constitution and bleed over, which it already has, into other areas and that cancer needs to be excised. Obergefell needs to be overturned."
"Well said, Matt," replied Wolfe.
