Mandating the right to marry to same sex couples on par with opposite sex couples across the United States is a very, very big deal, as the jubilant celebrations last week well attest. So I guess I should not be that surprised that the resistance to the decision is not merely rhetorical but that a non-trivial number of judges, town and county clerks and elected officials are continuing to resist the decision. Even after it is all over. You have a mix of clerks who are simply refusing to issue any marriage licenses, officials who are resigning, delaying tactics and more. Tierney Sneed catalogs the top strategies here.
One strategy is simply to refuse to issue any marriage licenses to anyone, which I guess gets the resistor off the hook for discriminating or not following the Court order since I guess the Court isn’t saying that county clerks have to be issuing marriage licenses in the first place. There are a number of local judges doing this across the Bible belt. Two county clerks are doing that in Kentucky. And there are other examples around the country. Meanwhile a county clerk in Michigan starting performing marriages because the local judge simply refused. “Our district court is no longer performing marriages,” said county clerk Ann Manary. “I’m not sure exactly what he’s thinking there.”
There are other little eddies of dissension and disagreement amidst the marriage equality tsunami. Mississippi’s Attorney General, a Democrat, has asked the court to release him from serving as the Attorney for the state’s Governor, a Republican, who wants to keep fighting the Court even after the fight is over. Go figure.
To be clear, this action is far from unprecedented. School desegregation and the dismantlement of Jim Crow was actively resisted in the South (where much of the current resistance is taking place) for years. And the resistance was of a much more serious and threatening character, on several occasion requiring the federal government to send national guard troops into Southern states to enforce the law.
I’m curious how long this will go on and what means will be taken to remove public officials who continue defying the law of the land.
