Kentucky marriage license fight pits the Supreme Court vs. the Supreme Being,

I’m really trying to understand how an elected official justifies ignoring a Supreme Court ruling and related subsequent court orders. Really, I am. Failing to date to do so, I sought enlightenment Wednesday at the Abilene Country Club.

I drove to Abilene to question presidential candidate Mike Huckabee prior to his lunch with supporters — and a day after his triumphant appearance in Kentucky with Kim Davis, the county clerk who, on religious grounds, won’t issue same-sex marriage licenses even though the courts say she must.

Davis was freed from jail Tuesday because her office, in her absence, obeyed the Supreme Court decision mandating same-sex marriage licenses. The Washington Post characterized the Davis release event, featuring Huckabee — who on Wednesday called it “our event” — as “part block party, part Old Testament revival and part presidential campaign rally.”

Here’s what I asked Huckabee: “Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, and in jurisdictions in which same-gender marriage was not legal, would you have supported a county clerk who issued a marriage license to a same-sex couple because the clerk’s religious beliefs told him or her it was wrong to deny a marriage license to a same-sex couple?”

Huckabee, correctly perceiving it wasn’t the most artfully asked question, asked me to “go back through that again.” I did so to make sure he was clear on what I was asking. He was.

I feared I might not get a simple answer to what I thought was a simple question. I was right. And maybe Huckabee is right. Maybe it’s not a simple question.

“The fundamental question,” he said, “goes back to whether the courts can make law.”

He believes they cannot, even when using their well-established authority to pass judgment on laws, sometimes with a healthy eye toward protecting the rights of the few from the whims of the many.

Huckabee said Davis was jailed not only for following her Christian beliefs, but for following Kentucky law. Huckabee believes Supreme Court rulings cannot change laws passed by the elected representatives of the people. Believing thusly, Huckabee believes Davis must continue to operate under existing Kentucky law.

It was at that moment that I realized I wasn’t going to find enlightenment on this issue on this day at the Abilene Country Club.

The same-sex marriage case seems to be a textbook example of the courts protecting the rights of all. But Huckabee is willing to dismiss the Supreme Court ruling as “a very divided 5-4 court decision that was lambasted by the dissenting justices as being a judicial overreach.”

Sorry, governor, Supreme Court decisions aren’t graded on a curve. A decision is a decision, regardless of the margin of the score or the rhetoric of the dissenters.

“The issue is whether or not this country is going to abandon its separation of powers and have three equal branches of government or will we have a supreme branch that rules over the other two,” Huckabee said. “Because if that happens, which is what is happening in America today, we have destroyed our constitutional system of government.”

He expressed displeasure at the notion that “the moment the court burps out a decision we’re all supposed to fall down and worship it as if it’s the final word.”

Seems like someone somewhere needs to have the final word in cases involving equal rights. The courts, flaws and all, seem like a reasonable place for that.

Huckabee said we’ve been living for a generation under “this ridiculously unconstitutional notion that if the Supreme Court says something, even if it’s highly divided, that’s it.”

“So I’d ask this question,” Huckabee said to me: “If the Supreme Court had voted 5-4 to affirm traditional biblical marriage, would the other side say, ‘Hey, that’s the law of the land. It’s over’?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“You do know the answer to that, c’mon,” Huckabee said.

“What’s the answer?” I said.

“You know the answer,” he said. “They would not have given up.”

He’s probably right. The other side wouldn’t have given up. But I’d like to think that side would have adhered to the Supreme Court ruling while continuing the fight.