{"id":9961,"date":"2015-06-30T01:35:26","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T01:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9961"},"modified":"2015-06-30T01:35:26","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T01:35:26","slug":"hats-off-to-local-county-clerks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9961","title":{"rendered":"Hats off to local county clerks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If I were wearing a hat at this moment, I’d tip it to two Texas county clerks: Randall County’s Renee Calhoun and Potter County’s Julie Smith.<\/p>\n

All they did was agree to adhere to their oath of office and will issue marriage licenses to gay couples who seek them.<\/p>\n

This is in accordance with a Supreme Court decision this past week that legalized gay marriage across the nation. It also resists the notion that they could refuse to issue licenses to same-sex couples, which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton authorized them to do.<\/p>\n

Given the extreme partisan divide across the land, it’s fair to make this point: Both women, Calhoun and Smith, are Republican county clerks. The state AG also is a Republican. They are defying the state’s attorney general, who contends that clerks could object if they had religious objections to issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.<\/p>\n

The two county clerks plan to issue the licenses as soon as they get some paperwork matters straightened out.<\/p>\n

Good for them.<\/p>\n

Paxton’s decision to allow the clerks to refuse issuing the licenses has met with mixed response from county clerks across the state.<\/p>\n

The attorney general’s approach to this matter is wrong-headed, as it seeks to allow these elected officials to disavow the oath of office they took, which is to follow the laws of the nation and the state.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has determined — as the final arbiter of what is constitutional and what is not — that state bans on same-sex marriage violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

Thus, gay marriage is now legal.<\/p>\n\n

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If I were wearing a hat at this moment, I’d tip it to two Texas county clerks: Randall County’s Renee Calhoun and Potter County’s Julie Smith. All they did was agree to adhere to their oath of office and will issue marriage licenses to gay couples who seek them. This is in accordance with a … Continue reading Hats off to local county clerks<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[29,1610,1863,2609,2652,3679,3824,3890,4954,4984],"class_list":["post-9961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","tag-14th-amendment","tag-equal-protection-clause","tag-gay-marriage","tag-julie-smith","tag-ken-paxton","tag-potter-county-clerk","tag-randall-county-clerk","tag-renee-calhoun","tag-u-s-constitution","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}