Texas Update
As most of you remember, the Texas Attorney General said that county clerks in Texas did not have to supply marriage licenses to icky gay people because Jesus.
That’s fine. Jesus doesn’t sit on the Supreme Court but his Dad does in the form of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
So, Glen Maxey and the Texas Democratic Party rounded up lawyers and told them to start filing suit in every county where gays were being rejected by their own damn government.
One of the sternest, crankiest and meanest county clerks is in Hood County by the name of Katie Lang. Much has been said about her name, but my friend Rutger said it best: “In the current case, saying Katie Lang out loud exemplifies the always profound symbiosis between homophones and irony.” That’s funny.
Now all these county clerks got themselves all worked up over their closely held religious beliefs. Luckily, that was trumped by their closely held held going-to-court beliefs. One by one, they are folding.
Including Katie Lang.
Isn’t that the cutest two cowboys you’ve ever seen? They’ve been together 27 years.
Let’s hear it for love!
Hooray for love! And your friend Rutger has the right of it. Delicious irony!
1Have you ever heard of a clerk not accept a petition for divorce for filing because her religion doesn’t believe in divorce? Didn’t think so.
2My guess is that the county attorney told the commissioners that Hood County would lose the suit and be stuck paying the attorneys’ fees, and that the county commissioners shuddered and told Lang to sit herownself down and be quiet.
3Well, the suit is still operational. Till Clerk Lang does two things: says to the court that she want hassle the next couple applying all after that and numbero two: pays Jan Soifer and Austin Kaplan’s fees for filing the suit and then their big fat fees for representing Jim and Joe. And that is on her personal part (not the taxpayers of Hood County).
Don’t know what the cost by the hour of going to hell holes is, but I’m sure it’s steep.
Watch this space for the next really cranky clerk, Ms. Molly Criner of Irion. She’s got the Liberty Counsel, an offshoot of Liberty University aka Jerry Falwell’s bunch cranking her up with Biblical law that trumps the US Constitution.
Jan and Austin might soon be schooling here, too.
4The core belief of the religious right is that they get to boss people around and control their sex lives. The rest is just details.
5Ah, the bottom line $.
6Kind of thought it would go this way. That Liberty group is now treading on thin air and it couldn’t happen to more persnickety bunch!
7Do unto others ………
8http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/07/1400096/-Texas-County-Clerk-Pledges-To-Defy-SCOTUS-Marriage-Ruling-And-Issues-Anti-Gay-Manifesto?detail=facebook
They just never learn.
9Although it is not in this piece, I read that Ms Lang said she wouldn’t issue a marriage license to a same sex couple but that her clerks could. Practitioners and anyone who has actually read at least one marriage license knows the license is issued in the name of the County Clerk in each county. So she’s issuing each marriage license whether she admits it or continues to lie to herownself.
Plus the comment above about clerks who might oppose divorce on religious grounds is brilliant. Of course no District Clerk in the history of the universe has ever “refused” a divorce filing.
10And issuing a marriage license to any divorced person whose ex is alive is directly against what Jesus said in three of the gospels, where he said zilch about gays. Try that Biblical position and see how far you get, Ms Lang and everybody like her.
11Micr, agreed. buskyandme @2 made an excellent point about divorce and religious beliefs.
Glen Maxey make the bigots bleed big bucks! The Fourteenth Amendment may not be in their Buy-Bull, but it is in our US Constitution. Hope the Writ Twits deliver the legal equivalent of a body slam to the anti-equality crowd until their brain cells actually engage or they bleed out through their noses and bank accounts.
12brian posted a good story about a real hard case clerk that is being defended by the right-wing Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based anti-LGBT hate group. Of course Irion County only has a total population of 1,612 so she is ’tilting at windmills’. Eventually, either she will be forced to resign or be inundated with a barrage of lawsuits.
13http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-has-a-test-case-irion-county-clerk-wont-license-same-sex-marriages-7377016
Again, Paxton is an example of the dangers of Robotic voting–they pushed the lever for the big red letter R and look what they got–another corrupt politician facing criminal felony charges and also chosen to uphold the law (Attorney General, really?)–Here he is telling our public servants (taxpayer money paying their wages) to break the law and it is okay, if you have religion–Paxton, Abott and Patrick all saying it is mighty fine to encourage you all to break the law and refuse to do your jobs all because you believe your religion trumps over the law?? I hope the case is made and they all will be told to resign, or do your job.
14This is more proof that the folks who demand the rest of us live by their religious rules are only as faithful as their wallets allow them to be.
Thanks Glen Maxey!
15Maybe this dizzy b—-h will meet Jade Helm up close and at bayonet range in the near future. Hope Obama gets serious about enforcing the laws of the land.
16Well struck, Glen Maxey, well done!
17Being served with a stamped-filed copy of a Complaint generally gets people’s attention! Good on the legal eagles – hope it is pro bono and if withdrawn, ask the Cosunty Clerks to pay the filing fees!
The Three Decatur, TN moronic Clerk(s) ‘resigned’ effective 07/14; an interim Clerk has been appointed. Bets are on for them to ask to keep their jobs as those were ‘primo’ jobs for that part of rural Tennessee. Damn fools.
18What part of the “Separation of Church and State” do these idiots not understand?
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