U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a rabidly antigay Republican from Texas, has repeated his call for impeachment of Supreme Court justices who ruled for marriage equality, with Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg first in line.
The reason, Gohmert told a right-wing radio talk show host, is that Kagan and Ginsburg officiated same-sex marriages before hearing and ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, and therefore they could not be impartial in the case.
The longtime opponent of marriage equality had called for the justices' impeachment in July, and he ratcheted up his rhetoric in an interview with Florida conservative radio host Joyce Kaufman last week.
“We have two of them who had done same-sex marriages before they participated, they were disqualified, but they illegally participated, it’s an illegal decision, and it’s time to start impeaching judges and remove them from the Supreme Court,” he said.
He also decried court decisions decades earlier on prayer in schools, falsely claiming the court had mandated that “you can’t talk about God in schools and public places.” But what the justices did June 26 was far worse, he said:
“The Supreme Court said, ‘You know, we told you you couldn’t use ‘God,’ now here’s the new line: ‘We’re God,’” he said. “‘We are your God. Forget what God, Moses, Jesus ever said, we are your God now, the five of us in the majority, you do as we tell you.’”
Gohmert, who has been a finalist in The Advocate's Phobie Awards, has compared LGBT activists to Nazis, said that judges who rule for marriage equality “need some basic plumbing lessons,” accused gay Boy Scouts of pedophilia, and suggested that if gays and lesbians were banished to an island with heterosexuals, it would be clear that same-sex marriage is against “nature,” and would prove what “nature says is the preferred marriage.”
Gohmert, by the way misstated the facts regarding justices officiating at same-sex weddings as he repeated his call for Ginsburg and Kagan to be impeached. At no time have any justices of the U.S. Supreme Court been disqualified for performing any legal marriages.
Listen to a clip of his interview with Kaufman, courtesy of Right Wing Watch, below:
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