On the flip side, Kern County will not perform ANY weddings...

[johno]

The Kern County Clerk Stops Performing ANY weddings.

Ms Barnett claims it is due to budgetary and security concerns around the upcoming elections, that something had to give budget wise. Wedding were the thing to had to go. {cough cough} The timing was a just a coincidence, as is the fact that her expected legal issues will be paid for by a conservative "defense of marriage" group.

Comments

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

One hopes someone will quickly file a lawsuit, so that Ms. Barnett may properly go down in flames.

It strikes me that something similar happened when the right to life conservatives encouraged pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control.

I am disgusted at the idea that people try again and again to delay enforcement of the law, until they can rally up enough discontent to try to overturn laws they don't like.

I hope that years from now, we will look back on episodes like these and do the same sort of collective "cringe" that we do when we look at the Jim Crow laws of the South, and wonder at how anyone could be so predjudiced.

Pardon me...

[discodj.livejournal.com]

Equality is equality. No matter how crappy, stupid, pig-headed or religiously based (bIased?) this may be (and don't get me wrong it IS), as long as she treats all parties equal, then there shouldn't be a problem.

Quoting from an LATimes article... "Shannon Price Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said he didn't have a problem with Barnett's decision as long as she applied it evenly."

The issue is when you're NOT being treated equal.

Re: Pardon me...

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

Yet, because every other county courthouse provides this legal service, then every couple who wishes to marry, straight or gay, is being deprived. Since this is a government agency, she doesn't get to choose which goverment services to be provided to the people.

It is also a civil rights issue, because it within that county, it leaves only religious avenues available to obtain the legislated civil advantages of marriage.

This is exactly equivalent to a county welfare office of a state agency deciding not to provide welfare benefits to anyone, so that they do not have to provide them to a racial minority (blacks, Hispanic, American Indians.) Equal, but still wrong.

Re: Pardon me...

[howeird]

Not in this case. The services her department provides are mandated by local law, she does not have the option to not perform them unless she chooses to quit her job. She does not have to perform weddings, that's not in her mandate, but she is required to issue licenses.