Scott Tibbs
Todd Young betrays conservatives and Christians
By Scott Tibbs, December 12, 2022
This is an open letter to Senator Todd Young.
Senator Young,
I have voted for you in every general election since 2010, and I have gone door-to-door and made phone calls for your campaigns. I am deeply disappointed in your vote for the so-called "Respect for Marriage Act" and the betrayal of conservative values your vote represents.
Before we even get into the merits of the legislation, the federal government should not be deciding same-sex marriage. That should be left to the states. You were elected in the Tea Party wave in 2010, which (like the 1994 wave election) represented the need to strengthen the authority of the states over the power-hungry federal government. Have you "evolved" in the twelve years you have been in Washington, or did you ever believe in federalism at all?
The RFMA also operates on the dishonest premise that there is a threat to interracial marriage. There is no such threat, and everyone knows it. No state will try to ban interracial marriage. Lumping interracial marriage in with same-sex marriage is disrespectful to the real struggles of the civil rights movement and the many sacrifices people of all races made to ensure equal rights for Black people.
Furthermore, you said for years that you did not support government recognizing the union of two men or two women as a marriage, but your vote has betrayed that promise as well. Once again, did you "evolve" in the dozen years you have been in Washington, or did you always support homosexual marriage and were hiding your beliefs until it became more politically feasible to hold those beliefs? This is what Barack Obama did. Are you Indiana's Obama? Why did you not explicitly state your support for this legislation
before the election, as it was clearly an issue then?
Defenders of the RFMA argue it is a compromise that protects religious liberty while making sure same-sex marriages that have been in place for seven years remain legally recognized. This is not true. Here is the relevant text:
Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to deny or alter any benefit, status, or right of an otherwise eligible entity or person, including tax-exempt status, tax treatment, educational funding, or a grant, contract, agreement, guarantee, loan, scholarship, license, certification, accreditation, claim, or defense, provided such benefit, status, or right does not arise from a marriage.
The RFMA says nothing in the law will be interpreted as a reason to deny religious liberty, but that is not the same as actually protecting religious liberty. True compromise legislation would have said that government agencies are
prohibited from discriminating against people who do not want to participate in a homosexual wedding. However, amendments that would have more strongly protected religious liberty were rejected.
Senator Young, there is nothing in the Constitution that guarantees the "right" to enter into a same-sex marriage. The idea that the men who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment in the 1860's intended to make homosexual marriage a "constitutional right" is laughable on its face. However, the Constitution
does explicitly protect religious liberty. You took an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution as a Congressman, as a Senator and as a U.S. Marine. You have broken all three oaths by voting for the RFMA.
I strongly encourage you to return to the principles you claimed to hold in 2010, and to work against the "Respect for Marriage Act." You also owe an apology to all of the people who voted for you with the expectation that you would stand for the institution of marriage and our religious freedom. It takes a great deal of courage to admit you were wrong, but courage is what is expected of all Marines.
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