Republican presidential candidate and esteemed doctor Ben Carson is here to educate us on how the Constitution works.
During his appearance on Newsmax TV yesterday, Carson sad the president has a responsibility to ignore the ruling if the Supreme Court strikes down bans on same-sex marriage.
“First of all, we have to understand how the Constitution works, the president is required to carry out the laws of the land, the laws of the land come from the legislative branch,” Carson said. “So if the legislative branch creates a law or changes a law, the executive branch has a responsibly to carry it out. It doesn’t say they have the responsibility to carry out a judicial law.”
Spoiler: that's not actually how any of this works.
The Supreme Court does not make laws, it rules on whether or not our laws violate the Constitution. If the Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional, that means state laws that ban it are invalid. It does not mean the Supreme Court has created a new law.
Furthermore, the federal ban on same-sex marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), has already been struck down. There is no "law of the land" for the president to uphold in this case if state laws are struck down. It is effectively out of the president's hands.
Is Ben Carson aware of this? If he is, does that mean he believes the office of the president has the authority to ban same-sex marriage in every state through an executive order? What happened to States' Rights?
Ben Carson's vision of supreme executive authority should be enough to even alarm conservatives, but we are talking about gay people so I'm sure they'll make an exception.