Marco Rubio believes that, in America, the bible trumps the Constitution. Right Wing Watch has the video clip.
If you look at biblical lessons, we are clearly called, in the Bible, to adhere to our civil authorities, but that conflicts with also a requirement to adhere to God’s rules. When those two come in conflict, God’s rules always win. In essence, if we are ever ordered by a government authority to personally violate and sin, violate God’s law and sin, if we’re ordered to stop preaching the gospel, if we’re ordered to perform a same-sex marriage as someone presiding over it, we are called to ignore that. We cannot abide by that because government is compelling us to sin.
First, let’s appreciate the absurd circular “reasoning” in Christian theology. Rubio mentions that people must obey the civil authority because the bible says so. Probably citing Romans 13. Then he says that if the civil authority conflicts with god’s rules, god’s rules win. But wait, he just said one of god’s rules was to obey the civil authority so to violate the civil authority is to violate god’s rules. It’s a bit like that scene in Austin Powers: “If I travel back to 1969 and I was frozen in 1967, presumably, I could go visit my frozen self. But if I’m still frozen in 1967, how could I have been unthawed in the nineties and traveled back, oh, no, I’ve gone cross-eyed.”
Let me try to uncross Mr. Rubio’s eyes. The U.S. Constitution is, in its own words, “the supreme law of the land.” The bible is not supreme. In fact, it’s not even mentioned in the Constitution, neither is god. The only mentions of religion in the Constitution are exclusionary: keep religion out of government, government out of religion, and a blanket ban on religious tests for public office. We might even say that the Constitution “build[s] a wall of separation between Church & State.” Given that the Constitution officially reigns supreme over the bible here in the United States, I think it’s safe to say that Rubio is wrong when he says that “God’s rules always win.”
This clip, which is admittedly an excerpt from a larger interview, rings with the sour notes of a sore loser. Rubio also claimed that Roe v. Wade and the Obergefell decision were “not settled law.” Those decisions uphold the fundamental right of women to choose their destiny and the right of LGBT Americans to marry the consenting adult of their choice. These decisions simply explain that the Constitution guarantees those rights.
The interviewer promises to post more video starting today. We’ll keep out eyes open for more of this intriguing religious “logic.”
