AUSTIN, TEXAS — Newly elected Texas Governor Greg Abbot is not pleased the Supreme Court of the United States ruled last week in an historic 5-4 decision that no state can deny any pair of consenting adults a marriage license. In practice, there is now no longer a distinction between “gay” and “regular” marriages as far as the highest court in the country is concerned, and that has Governor Abbot hopping mad, according to sources closest to Abbot. In the wake of last week’s decision, Abbot’s attorney general told clerks in his state that “numerous lawyers stand ready to assist clerks defending their religious beliefs,” as he and Abbot both feel those clerks who defy the high court and deny marriage licenses to gay couples will be sued in court.
On Monday, Abbot himself held a press conference, where his anger was visibly on display. “You know what I say to those who are trying to claim the 14th Amendment gives equal protection under the law to any and all groups who get rights and privileges from the Constitution,” Abbot asked rhetorically, spittle flying, “I say constitution-shmonstitution, no gay marriages in Texas dagnabbit! What kind of country do we live in if people can’t use their religious beliefs to oppress people? I say, oppression now, oppression later, oppression forever!”
Abbot, himself a lawyer, said that he doesn’t “care that the Constitution has been treated like a living document since Marbury v. Madison,” he believes “our country’s religious freedoms give citizens the right to abuse, subjugate and oppress whomever they so choose, as long as they vote on a law creating the oppression, subjugation or abuse” and that he is “aware that people in the 60’s used [his] kind of rationale to keep black people separate but equal under Jim Crow, but [he doesn’t] care because that was federal overreach too!”
“In my estimation, freedom of religion trumps all our rights, except of course for the most Christian of all our rights — the right to own guns that kill people,” Abbot told reporters. “The so-called Supremacy Clause may be in the Constitution’s Article 6, Clause 2, and it may have been the basis for every major civil rights decision of the past 150 years, but we conservatives don’t care about anything bout our feelings, and most importantly our feelings of supremacy, mixed with paranoia about losing our supremacy and therefore we say the Supremacy Clause doesn’t matter because we idiotically think the 10th Amendment means something in these cases, when the 14th Amendment clearly means more.”
Abbot told his clerks that “they don’t have to do shit unless the Lord compels them because that’s their right as Christians, Texans and Americans” even though the Supreme Court ruling clearly indicates this to not be the case. Much like racial segregation — or Jim Crow — laws that were passed in the wake of the Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments’ passing and ratification, proponents of banning same-sex marriage have leaned on religious freedom laws to bolster their position of power over the LGBT community, but also like those laws of the past, they were struck down in favor of the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection under the law.
“I’m not sayin’ we’re going to secede over this,” Abbot said, “after all, we’re a red state and we know that red states need that federal teat, no matter how much we say we don’t. We can’t keep our people dirt poor without the help of federal dollars. Though I am really tempted to. Put simply, separation of church and state is great and all, but it’s meaningless when it can’t be used as a cudgel to bludgeon free Americans whose only crime seems to be liking to do sex stuff with people of their same gender. That’s a fact, and I believe that Thomas Jefferson would agree with me.”
“Here’s the bottom line to Texan Christians — the good ones who aren’t all swayed by modern science and social paradigms I’m sayin’ now: we don’t wanna change. We don’t have to change. And we ain’t gonna change,” Abbot said as he was wrapping up the press conference. “So when you see the National Guard sent out to Texas to ensure that gay people get their marriage licenses, just know it ain’t the fault of those of us who want to pretend as if it’s not 2015, and that we have some God-given right to discriminate like assholes for no reason. It’ll be the fault of the high-fallutin’ liberals and their gay agenda for forcing us to reckon with modernity in a way we just can’t quite handle at all.”
Reporters asked Gov. Abbot if he’d be okay with a state writing a law defining marriage as being between two adults that aren’t in wheelchairs. “How dare you,” Abbot asked incredulously. “People in wheelchairs can’t help their disability! But being gay is a choice, no matter how much evidence to the contrary! So yeah, I’m not a hypocrite or anything, I swear to God!”
