Last year in The Public Eye magazine, Rachel Tabachnick and Frank L. Cocozzelli warned of the trend on the religious and political Right toward the use of “nullification” as a means of resistance by states to federal laws of which they do not approve. So it should come as no surprise that we are now seeing Christian Right leaders turn to nullification tactics in an attempt to thwart the marriage equality ruling at the Supreme Court.
In Kansas, Republican Governor Sam Brownback has issued“EXECUTIVE ORDER 15-05: Preservation and Protection of Religious Freedom,” which seeks to indemnify anti-LGBTQ discrimination under the rubric of the state’s modified version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Brownback writes in the Order that “the recent imposition of same sex marriage by the United States Supreme Court poses potential infringements on the civil right of religious liberty” and that, therefore, the state government shall not take “action against a religious organization, including those providing social services, wholly or partially on the basis that such organization declines or will decline to solemnize any marriage or to provide services, accommodations, facilities, goods, or privileges for a purpose related to the solemnization, formation, celebration or recognition of any marriage, based upon or consistent with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction…”