In a case certain to be replayed in judicial chambers throughout the United States, a North Carolina magistrate had to decide this week whether he would violate deeply held religious convictions and submit to the tyranny of the state or lose his job.

His predicament started with a ridiculous ruling from a Bush-appointed federal judge who ordered North Carolina to marry homosexuals despite the fact that such marriages were illegal under state law. The federal judge parroted other activist rulings throughout the country that have commandeered the Constitution’s equal protection and due process clauses to invalidate state voters’ efforts to protect traditional marriage.

Of course, there’s absolutely no way that the drafters of the federal Constitution (and its amendments) ever intended such provisions to mandate homosexual marriage. Every state in the union – until relatively recently – criminalized sodomy.

Not buying the argument that the Constitution intended to protect homosexual marriage, a magistrate refused to marry two homosexual men in Pasquotank County, North Carolina. The state court system reacted swiftly, issuing a memorandum ordering all judicial officers to officiate over such marriages or face termination.

That prompted Rockingham County Magistrate John Kallam, Jr. to resign. The committed Christian stated that when he began work as a judge, there was no expectation that he would preside over homosexual weddings. He also noted that marrying two men, or two women, “would desecrate a holy Institution established by God Himself. Since performing marriages is an integral part of being a Magistrate and in light of recent changes in North Carolina law, I can no longer fulfill my oath of office in good faith.”

He concluded his resignation letter with the words of King David: “‘He that rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God’. Where there is no ‘fear of God’ there can be no justice!”

Judges in Alaska are now faced with a similar predicament. After a Bush-appointed federal district court judge in Anchorage used the same twisted logic to invalidate the state constitutional amendment approved by an overwhelming number of Alaskans, Governor Sean Parnell asked the judge to stay his order while it was appealed. The activist judge rejected the Governor’s request, even though the Ninth Circuit subsequently granted a hold until the Supreme Court could review it.

Ultimately, Justice Kennedy, on behalf of the Supreme Court, refused to delay implementation of the Anchorage federal judge’s decision. That means, any day, the Alaska Court System – presided over by a justice who previously ordered a privately owned hospital in the valley to abort babies – will likely issue a directive similar to the North Carolina decree. It remains to be seen how magistrates will respond here.

It also remains to be seen how “We the People” will react to the elites’ hijacking of our Constitution and culture. The majority of Americans still believes, despite the endless efforts of Hollywood and judicial activists, that God ordained marriage as between a man and a woman. Given this commitment to God over man, the elites’ dogged efforts to consolidate control and impose their immorality on the rest of the nation may have just hit a massive speed bump.