Republican presidential hopefuls Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz have made the trip to Kentucky just in time to be with Kim Davis as she is released from jail. Huckabee planned to host a rally for Davis Thursday afternoon.
Sunday, Huckabee likened the Supreme Court decision to “judicial tyranny,” reports Yahoo News.
“What we’ve seen here is the overreach of the judiciary,” Huckabee said on ABC’s This Week. “This, if allowed to stand without any congressional approval, without any kind of enabling legislation, is what [President Thomas] Jefferson warned us about. That’s judicial tyranny.”
Last week, Cruz called Davis’ jailing an “outrage.”
“For the first time, we’re seeing a Christian thrown in jail for standing up for her faith,” Cruz told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. “I’ll tell you, I stand with Kim Davis unequivocally. I stand with her or anyone else the government is trying to persecute for standing up for their faith.”
Th Human Rights Campaign (HRC) was quick to condemn Huckabee’s and Cruz’s trip to Kentucky.
“Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee took a reckless and irresponsible trip to advocate on behalf of public servants who not only willfully flouted and ignored a federal court order, but also blocked other officials in the office from carrying out the law,” said JoDee Winterhof, HRC’s senior vice president of Policy and Political Affairs. “The right to believe is fundamental, but the right to use taxpayer dollars to promote discrimination is not. That’s exactly why the overwhelming majority of public officials across the country are upholding the rule of law and issuing marriage licenses to all couples, including same-sex couples who are seeking to get married. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee’s argument that taxpayers should promote discrimination and reward government employees who practice discriminatory behavior will be rejected by a majority of voters who support marriage equality and believe LGBT people should be protected from discrimination like all Americans.”
Cruz and Huckabee have both supported the new, so-called First Amendment Defense Act, which would create a breakdown of government services and runaway litigation. It would permit a federal employee, for example, to argue that they could refuse to process tax returns, visa applications or Social Security checks whenever a same-sex couple’s paperwork appears on his or her desk.
Fellow Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie criticized the pair on “Fox and Friends” Tuesday morning, “I think we should give her an option to do another job where her religious concerns are not going to be put into the cross hairs on this. So we have to have respect for people, but the government also has to function,” Christie said, adding that fellow 2016 Republican candidates shouldn’t “play politics” with the case.
