Pat Robertson: Same-sex marriage is still illegal

Pat Robertson

Christian televangelist Pat Robertson said Monday the U.S. Supreme Court's historic ruling on same-sex marriage does nothing to change its illegality due to separations of power.

"The 700 Club" host was asked on Monday's show how Christians should respond to the argument Romans 13:1-4 can be interpreted as de facto support for same-sex marriage.

"Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same," the biblical passage reads.

Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea have collaborated to create “Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians,” which confirms that groups like Pew Research, Newsweek and The Economist also identify Christians as “the world’s most widely persecuted religious group.”

Robertson gave answers echoed over the past few months by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis. Davis was ordered detained Sept. 3 under a ruling by U.S. District Judge David Bunning after she refused to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. She spent five days in jail.

"You can't have people misinterpreting the Bible," Roberts said. "The Supreme Court has issued a ruling. In the legal system, 'Party A' says to 'Party B' over marriage, 'I want to get married to them,' and the court says, 'OK, you can get married.' That doesn't mean I have to get married to a homosexual. It doesn't mean you have to, nor does it mean it's the law of the land. Congress didn't pass any law. Your state legislature didn’t pass a law. So you’re not under anything. It’s a decision of the court having to do with a couple of people. Now they would like to make it bigger than that but, in terms of the Constitution, it isn't."

Huckabee previously likened resistance to the Supreme Court's June 26 ruling to the efforts of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. to overcome racism.

"I don't think a lot of pastors and Christian schools are going to have a choice. They either are going to follow God, their conscience and what they truly believe is what the scripture teaches them, or they will follow civil law," Huckabee told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week," the Hill reported June 28. "They will go the path of Dr. Martin Luther King, who in his brilliant essay, the letters from a Birmingham jail, reminded us, based on what St. Augustine said, that an unjust law is no law at all. And I do think that we're going to see a lot of pastors who will have to make this tough decision."

The former Arkansas governor added, "I'm not sure that every governor and every attorney general should just say, 'Well, it's the law of the land,' because there's no enabling legislation," CNN reported June 29.

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The U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges sent homosexual couples to county clerks' office within minutes of the decision.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing on behalf of the court, said homosexuals should not be, "condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

President Obama, speaking from the White House Rose Garden, likened the decision to, "a thunderbolt," Reuters reported June 28.