Colorado AG Orders County Clerks To Recognize Gay Marriage
Photo Credit: Daily CallerBy Greg Campbell.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers ordered Colorado’s county clerks to be prepared to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Monday.
His statement came just hours after news that the Supreme Court would not hear cases from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. Suthers is a Republican who has defended the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
Gay couples in Colorado will be eligible for marriage licenses in all 64 counties as soon as the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals lifts its stay, something that’s expected to happen soon now that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear cases on same-sex marriage from five states. This refusal to take up appeals essentially legalizes gay marriage in those states.
Federal appeals courts had ruled that bans against same-sex marriage in those states were unconstitutional, but the courts instituted stays in their decisions pending a ruling from the high court.
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Photo Credit: dallasvoice.comGay Dallas judge won’t conduct marriages because they ‘can’t be performed for me’
By Anna Waugh.
Out lesbian Dallas County Judge Tonya Parker touted her refusal to conduct marriage ceremonies in her courtroom on Tuesday night.
“I have the power, of course, to perform marriage ceremonies,” Parker said. “I don’t.”
The mention of her decision to not perform marriage ceremonies came while the 116th Civil District Court judge addressed the audience at the monthly meeting of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas, of which Parker is a member. While Parker highlighted her progress in her first year as judge in what had been “the worst district court at the courthouse” with more old pending cases than the other 12 district courts, she also spoke about the importance of having an LGBT person on the bench.
Parker is the first LGBT person elected judge in Dallas County and is believed to be the first openly LGBT African-American elected official in the state’s history. As such, Parker said she takes into account the importance of her position to make members of the LGBT community feel comfortable and equal in her courtroom by “going out of my way to do things that other people might not do because they are not who I am.”
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States That Voted Against Gay Marriage Now Have It Forced Upon Them
By Katrina Trinko.
This isn’t OK.
The Supreme Court’s decision today to not hear any of the cases on same-sex marriage means, as my colleague Ryan T. Anderson writes, that “lower court rulings that struck down state marriage laws now will go into effect, forcing the redefinition of marriage in [Indiana, Wisconsin, Virginia, Oklahoma and Utah] and potentially in other states in the 4th, 7th, and 10th circuits.”
That shouldn’t be acceptable—regardless of your position on same-sex marriage.
Voters in 31 states voted to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Liberal California voted for that in 2008, and so did red Texas in 2005. From 1998 to 2012—not say, from 1870 to 1890, or some other long-gone time period—34 states voted on defining marriage as being between a man and a woman—and only three voted against it.
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