Country singer Chris Young adds Charleston to his World Tour

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCIV) — 

In 1961, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it’s illegal to make people say they believe in God to get government jobs. Justice Hugo Black, writing the majority opinion, added a footnote in that decision calling Secular Humanism a religion.

Based on that footnote, several South Carolina lawmakers in a newly filed bill argue the federal government has illegally established a national favored religion by recognizing same-sex and other so-called “parody” marriages.

The bill is called the Marriage and Constitution Restoration Act. It holds that the federal government has violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, because it forces states to recognize Secular Humanism as a national religion by recognizing same-sex marriages.

The bill’s sponsors hope to use that interpretation as grounds to have South Carolina define marriage specifically as between one man and one woman, labeling any other union as a “parody marriage” (man-man, woman-woman, man-animal, man-object) the state no longer has to recognize.

The legal reasoning of the six Upstate Republicans co-sponsoring the bill is based on the notion that marriage is viewed in the eyes of the federal government as secular, not religious.

However, the sponsors claim all “parody” marriages absolutely are non-secular institutions of the so-called Secular Humanism religion — whether or not the people in these “parody” marriages actually consider themselves Secular Humanists.

Since same-sex marriage was green-lighted nationally in 2015, the bill’s sponsors say “there has been a land rush on the persecution of nonobservers by Secular Humanists, and an effort by Secular Humanists to infiltrate and indoctrinate minors in public schools to their religious world view.”

The bill does not define what a “nonobserver” is. The Council for Secular Humanism, meanwhile, defines Secular Humanism as a “non-religious life stance.”

The bill goes on to indirectly call any law respecting “parody” marriages a “sham,” and says “sexual orientation” is a “self-asserted sex-based identity narrative based on a series of naked assertions and unproven faith-based assumptions.”

“It is unsettled whether or not sexual orientation is immutable or genetic and is therefore a matter of faith,” the bill reads.

The bill’s primary sponsor is Steven Long (R-Boiling Springs).

“This bill strikes the perfect balance between the Freedom of Expression Clause and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment,” Long wrote on his Facebook page. All other forms of parody marriage (man-object, man-animal, man-multiperson, man-man, man-self) cannot be recognized by the government. This is a multi-state effort and is backed by a lot of case law.”

Long reportedly co-wrote the bill with Chris Sevier, an anti-same-sex marriage activist who has famously sued several states for not being allowed to marry his laptop, and sued members of Congress for displaying the LGBTQ pride flag outside their offices.

Sevier says on his Facebook page that he wrote the bill with Long and Rep. Lars O. Lone of Wyoming, who introduced a similar bill in that state.

“This bill(‘s) … introduction will compel the Federal Government and most of the other states to get on board,” Sevier says. “We care deeply care about marriages, families, children, rule of law, and Constitutional integrity.”

Other bill sponsors include Reps. Bill Chumley (Simpsonville), Mike Burns (Taylors), John McCravy (Greenwood), Josiah Magnuson (Campobello) and Rick Martin (Newberry). All are Republicans from the Upstate.

Chumley and Burns spearheaded in 2015 an effort to have S.C. pass a law nullifying federal laws relating to same-sex marriage.

That bill, called the South Carolina Natural Marriage Defense Act, souught to

• Defend natural marriage as between one man and one woman;
• Invalidate court decisions to the contrary;
• Require the S.C. Attorney General to defend state officials in lawsuits related to the state’s definition of marriage;
• Prohibit enforcement of court decisions contrary to South Carolina’s laws; and
• Protect government officials from arrest or other penalties for noncompliance with unlawful court orders.

The bill never made it beyond a House Committee.

Chumley in the past has sponsored bills that would’ve outlawed Obamacare in South Carolina, blocked pornography on all computers in South Carolina, and created a monument for South Carolina blacks who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War despite historians saying none ever did.

Chumley also staunchly opposed removing the Confederate Flag from Statehouse grounds in 2015.