GOP presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee is celebrating the release of Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who walked out of jail with him Tuesday afternoon. Davis was locked up for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses against her religious beliefs.
“Five unelected lawyers think they can rule. We’re here to say, ‘No, they cannot,” the former Baptist pastor said to a crowd of supporters who cheered in agreement.
In his speech, Huckabee highlighted the issue of the Supreme Court “making law” instead of upholding law, and the overreach of one governmental branch into another.
“Our founders warned us of the consequences of forgetting something that most of us learned in ninth grade civics. We learned that there are three branches of government. Not one, but three.” Huckabee continued, “Each is equal to the other.”
Huckabee said the Founding Fathers were inspired to create a unique form of government as people are sinners, so the idea of “checks and balances” were important when creating government, as to not give one person or one branch too much power to rule over the people.
“This is the genius of our Constitution. This is what we have all agreed would be our contract that we would live under.”
He said the Supreme Court has the ultimate authority within only that one branch. “The founders never gave that one branch of government the power to make the law. That is reserved for the representatives of the people.”
Our founders were so concerned that they said should we ever come to the place where we allow a court to run amuck of its purpose that we would be living under what is no less than judicial tyranny. That is why we gather today. It is far more than one clerk saying she will not issue marriage licenses. It is that every one of us will have to decide whether or not we want to keep this great republic or whether we are willing to sacrifice it and surrender it to tyranny.
Huckabee said he believes the large gathering shows that, “We will not surrender to the tyranny of one branch of government.”
“God intervened,” Huckabee said in creating America.
Then, he quoted Forrest Gump saying, “God showed up.” But clarified, that God showed up “in the form of an elected Democrat named Kim Davis.”
“It was a Republican judge who put her in this jail to begin with,” he said, saying this injustice is about religious liberty and avoiding tyranny – not about political parties.
“I don’t care what party a person is as much as I care whether or not they believe that this country was founded on basic fundamental principles that all of us must live under. And for those who want the courts to make law so the politicians can be excused and cowardly hide behind the court and not take a stand, I say that is exactly what our country was not supposed to be,” Huckabee challenged.
“So today we gather, we fought, so that we could rally and maybe get the attention of not only a judge, but of the world to say America is not dead and those of us who love this country are not walking away…running away…we will stand with our faith and will not be bullied.”
Huckabee also had a message for the judge who jailed Davis, Judge David Bunning.
If this judge believes that somebody must be put in jail because a person is willing to stand on the biblical definition of marriage, and is willing to stand because they believe that the Constitution does not allow the courts to make up law according to their own whims…I would ask this of him, let Kim go. But if you have to put someone in jail, I volunteer to go.
“Lock me up if you think that’s how freedom is best served,” he challenged.
Huckabee concluded by posing a question to the crowd. “Who’s next?” he said, referencing the possibility of a baker or pastor being penalized for upholding his or her faith.
“Will you be ready to take the stand?”