708
Tennessee GOP quietly overturns marriage equality by giving officials the right to refuse
(www.advocate.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
708 points (97.5% liked)
politics
19244 readers
2018 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No. The County Clerk's office issues marriage licenses before the marriage is solemnized, and the officiant who solemnizes the marriage then turns the license back in, completed.
Basically you get issued the license to permit the marriage, someone accepts that paperwork and solemnizes the marriage (usually in some variety of ceremony, as befits your cultural and religious preferences), then that person (the officiant) completes the license and submits it back to the state to inform them it's been done.
The Tennessee law in question essentially says that just because someone is allowed to officiate a marriage in Tennessee doesn't mean they are required to if they have some issue with the pairing. AKA you can't force a preacher from a decidedly anti-LGBT church to marry you just because they are a preacher. Likewise for not being able to force the local Grand Wizard to solemnize your interracial marriage. Or any other reason someone might not want to officiate literally every marriage presented to them.
Does it? It's not a state employee performing their job function that's given this leeway. The County Clerk is still required to issue the marriage license and is still required to accept and process completed ones, even if they disagree with those pairings.
It's the person performing the wedding that is given leeway to decide who they are willing to marry, and the options there are broad enough that it doesn't meaningfully restrict you (there are about 102,000 notaries public as well as an assortment of current and former elected officials and literally any clergy of any faith).
https://order.spaghettimonster.org/ordination/
That might count, though FSM is often in a grey area because it's usually primarily a satire of religion rather than claiming to actually be one. The list of who can solemnize marriage in Tennessee is here:
https://www.nashville.gov/departments/county-clerk/marriage-license/who-can-solemnize
Clergy mostly fall under:
Military and law enforcement chaplains have their own items in the list, further down. Apparently they don't count as "regular" clergy?
36-3-301(a)(2): Persons receiving online ordinations may not solemnize the rite of matrimony.
They already thought of that.