Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer may have vetoed a bill earlier this year that would have allowed businesses and individuals to refuse services to LGBT people on religious grounds, but don't get to thinking she's completely down with the whole "equality" thing.
The Republican isn't celebrating U.S. District Judge John Sedwick's ruling today in favor of marriage equality. Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, a Republican, will not appeal the ruling, so marriage equality has taken effect in the state.
In a statement Friday, Brewer noted that Arizona voters approved an anti-marriage equality amendment in 2008 and declared that "with their rulings, the federal courts have again thwarted the will of the people."
“It is not only disappointing, but also deeply troubling," Brewer's statement read, "that unelected federal judges can dictate the laws of individual states, create rights based on their personal policy preferences and supplant the will of the people in an area traditionally left to the states for more than two hundred years. As Justice Scalia opined, such action is tantamount to ‘an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’ and is an image of the judiciary ‘that would have been unrecognizable to those who wrote and ratified our national charter.’"
Brewer's view is that if same-sex couples are to enjoy full equality, they should have to wait until their rights have been subject to popular plebiscite or legislative approval.
"If society wants to recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions," Brewer said, "that decision should be made through our elected representatives or at the ballot -- not the courts."
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