Ryan Zinke holds himself up as a champion of the “constitutional rights” of all Americans, but his voting record in Congress and his position on important constitutional issues are certainly not consistent with the Constitution he professes to worship.

For example, he voted for legislation containing language that would allow federal contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans while receiving taxpayer funding. He then voted against amendments that would contravene that language, and voted against a specific amendment that would prohibit government contractors from discriminating against LGBTQ employees.

Zinke also signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, affirming his position that the court should not permit same-sex marriage across the country even though the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause guarantee the fundamental right of same-sex couples to marry.

He also voted for a bill which would protect the tax-exempt status and other benefits of religious institutions and religiously affiliated organizations that discriminate against LGBTQ Americans, unmarried parents, and others who fall outside narrow religious precepts. Collectively, these votes by Zinke show that he doesn’t believe the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment applies to all American citizens and is willing to deny some selected groups of Americans their constitutionally protected rights.

The only part of our Constitution Zinke openly defends is the Second Amendment. Even then, he completely misrepresents its purpose and the framers’ intent. He incorrectly believes the Amendment provides a constitutionally protected individual right of everyone to bear arms. Further, he attempts to imbue the Amendment with divine provenance by claiming that “Our Second Amendment rights are God-given rights.”

If Zinke took time to actually read the Constitution, he would know that it provides no such right and is also a relentlessly secular document that never once mentions God and contains no claims of divine provenance of any kind anywhere in it. But that doesn’t stop him from claiming a “God-given right” exists that, in reality, is neither spelled out nor implied in the Constitution. He doesn’t support the Constitution as written, but instead supports a version of it that he wants, but has never existed.

This is confirmed by (1) his false belief that private citizens have a “God-given” constitutional right to carry concealed weapons, (2) his vote against proposed legislation that would ban suspected terrorists from purchasing guns, asserting it would strip law-abiding citizens of their constitutional rights, and (3) his opposition to a recently approved ordinance requiring criminal background checks on all gun sales and transfers within the city of Missoula, asserting it would “trample” the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Zinke is willfully ignorant of the fact that the U.S. Constitution is not and has never been a barrier to gun-control laws. It does not guarantee all law-abiding citizens the absolute right to purchase or bear arms outside of serving on a regulated militia. But he intentionally misrepresents the Second Amendment’s purpose to justify his opposition to any sensible gun-control legislation and ordinances.

The Second Amendment says in full: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution defines what a “well-regulated Militia” is. The amendment’s prefatory clause makes three important points: preservation of the right of the people of each of the several states to maintain a militia is the amendment’s purpose; the militia is necessary to the preservation of a free state; and the militia must be well regulated.

The amendment can only be interpreted in that context. If the founders hadn’t wanted guns to be regulated, they would not have put “well-regulated” in the amendment. Further, the amendment does not say or imply that the militia shall consist of people armed with their own personal weapons.

But Zinke and many other conservatives who claim to embrace the idea that the Constitution’s meaning was fixed forever when it was ratified in 1787, have ignored and fought to re-interpret and misrepresent the Second Amendment. He apparently believes its prefatory clause is only useless window dressing, added for rhetoric, irrelevant to the framers’ intent, and therefore, to be ignored. Of course this is completely inconsistent with his criteria that Supreme Court nominees must possess unconditional respect for the original intent of the Constitution’s framers, and adhere to the actual wording of its text.

What is clear is that Zinke’s legislative votes and positions do not match the Constitution he claims to uphold and defend. It’s unfortunate that someone who swore an oath to support the Constitution has so little understanding of it and so little respect for both what it actually says and the intent of its founders.

Montana deserves a representative in Congress who follows the actual wording of our Constitution, adheres to the framers’ intent, and demonstrates their true faith and allegiance to both. That someone is Denise Juneau; it certainly is not Ryan Zinke.

Elwood is a resident of Kalispell.