While right-thinking folks around the country celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, the most extreme conservative voices in Arkansas wallowed in rage and hyperbole. It wasn’t pretty. Clip and save. This sort of talk will only seem more reprehensible (and confounding) as time goes by.

Never giving in. I am dedicated to restoring religious liberty & states rights. I am standing in the gap — it is here I shall live or die.

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— Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Conway) on Twitter. Rapert also released a 21-minute diatribe against the decision on YouTube, where he blamed the same-sex marriage decision on Marbury v. Madison, one of the foundational pieces of jurisprudence in the Court’s history. It was decided in 1803.

“The question this ruling raises is ‘What is a marriage, and what is a family?’ If marriage can be between two men, why can’t it be between three or five? What is the logical argument for limiting it to just two people? We’re eliminating the very definition of marriage, and in so doing we are redefining the family as well.”

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— Jerry Cox, president of the Family Council

“The Supreme Court has spoken with a very divided voice on something only the Supreme Being can do — redefine marriage. I will not acquiesce to an imperial court any more than our Founders acquiesced to an imperial British monarch. We must resist and reject judicial tyranny, not retreat. …

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“The Supreme Court can no more repeal the laws of nature and nature’s God on marriage than it can the law of gravity. Under our Constitution, the court cannot write a law, even though some cowardly politicians will wave the white flag and accept it without realizing that they are failing their sworn duty to reject abuses from the court. If accepted by Congress and this president, this decision will be a serious blow to religious liberty, which is the heart of the First Amendment.”

— Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

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For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness & unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Rom 1:18.

— Rep. David Meeks (R-Greenbrier) on Twitter

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“How long before a new Paul, he of the New Testament, will be writing blazing letters? Or a new Dietrich Bonhoeffer will arise to stir us? That pastor resisted another government’s decrees when Nazi Germany was supposed to be the Wave of the Future.

“We can hardly wait for the appearance of such new prophets and old prophecies renewed. For political/legal defeats can lead to moral victories. It can free us to express our deepest, best, most resistant selves no matter what the dominant culture may try to impose on us.

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“Onward, Christian soldiers!”

— The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page on June 30

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