Texas AG says clerks can cite religious objections on gay marriage, most states complying with ruling

The top law enforcement official in Texas said county clerks can cite religious objections in denying marriage licenses for gay couples — though the Lone Star State and others have for the most part started complying with Friday’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

 

Despite initial resistance in several of the 14 states that did not previously allow same-sex marriage, top officials in those states by Monday said they planned to comply. Among them were officials in Mississippi and Louisiana.

 

Even staunch conservative critics acknowledge states will have to, in the near-term, follow the court ruling.

 

But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, released a statement suggesting the next battle over gay marriage may be over how to balance that ruling with First Amendment religious freedoms. He predicted clerks and others could be at the center of it.

 

“[T]he United States Supreme Court again ignored the text and spirit of the Constitution to manufacture a right that simply does not exist,” he said in a statement released late Sunday. “… Importantly, the reach of the Court’s opinion stops at the door of the First Amendment and our laws protecting religious liberty.”

 

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