November 18, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver says that if Donald Trump appoints constitutional originalists like the late Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, the 2015 Obergefell v Hodges ruling that forced homosexual “marriage” on the states likely will be overturned.
“[I]f you nominate someone to the Supreme Court that has a judicial philosophy, not that they’re political pro-life vs. pro-abortion, but that they’re pro-life in the sense of they know that the Constitution has no basis for abortion,” Staver told WND's Radio America in a November 14 interview. “That means that someone’s viewing the Constitution based upon the written text. They’re not activists.
“So if you have a person who is a pro-life justice, that’s a person who’s not going to be an activist justice or judge,” he said. “If they’re not going to be activists on pro-life, then they’re not going to be activist on the issue of same-sex marriage because that’s even a further deviation from the Constitution beyond belief.”
“So if you put someone in there to fill Scalia’s spot, we’re still at … 5-4, right?” said Staver, an attorney who has defended Christian liberty cases before the high court. “So we still have the same terrible decision on marriage. But it’s likely that one more, two more, three more possibilities will come open in the next four years. And all he [Trump] has to do is appoint another Scalia, another Justice Thomas, someone who will respect the Constitution and, therefore, guess what happens? 5-4, 6-3, depending on how many he appoints, the other way.”
Staver continued, “Just give the opportunity to fill those seats with someone who respects the Constitution and this razor-thin 5-4 decision on same-sex marriage, I think, will be in the same trash bin of history that Dred Scott found itself to be in when people began to wake up and have some common sense.”
In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford case, the Supreme Court ruled (7-2) ruled that blacks, such as Dred Scott, brought into the United States as slaves could not be U.S. citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. Dred Scott was effectively overturned by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th Amendment, giving black Americans full citizenship.
As LifeSiteNews reported, many social conservatives were troubled by President-elected Trump’s assertion, in a CBS 60 Minutes interview, that the Obergefell decision, unlike Roe v. Wade, was “settled” law.