David Barton had a busy month of October. Here is the first of many,,,
Several times, we have heard David Barton make the absurd claim that biblical law was directly incorporated into the U.S. Constitution through the Seventh Amendment, which he then uses to assert that laws legalizing abortion and gay marriage are unconstitutional.
Lately, Barton has tried to bolster this argument by citing an obscure 1913 Texas Supreme Court ruling in a case called Grigsby v Reib, which he claims proves that America can never accept a definition of marriage that differs from God's definition.
In Barton's telling, this case was about efforts to attain legal recognition for secular "civil unions" that were separate from marriage as a religious institution but which the court denied on the grounds that "government is not allowed to redefine something that God himself has defined."
On his radio show yesterday, Barton once again cited the case and read excerpts from the decision to argue that gay marriage can never be legal:
Marriage was not originated by human law. When God created Eve, she was a wife to Adam; they then and there occupied the status of husband to wife and wife to husband ... The truth is that civil government has grown out of marriage. which created homes, and population, and society, from which government became necessary. Marriages will produce a home and family that will contribute to good society, to free and just government, and to the support of Christianity. It would be sacrilegious to apply the designation "a civil contract" to such a marriage. It is that and more; a status ordained by God.
The key finding in this case, Barton asserts, is that the court basically ruled that "we can't do something different than what God's done on" the issue of marriage.
Given that nothing that Barton says ought ever to be taken at face value, we decided to read the court decision for ourselves and, not surprisingly, found that Barton's interpretation of the ruling is entirely misleading.
Still More Evidence That David Barton's History Simply Cannot Be Trusted | Right Wing Watch
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