Saturday, July 11, 2015

[COMMENTARY] Clerks are bound to follow law

FRANKFORT  – A Republican attorney I know sees the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage and the reaction in Kentucky – where some county clerks refuse to issue marriage licenses – through the lens of history.
“It’s this generation’s Brown v. Board of Education,” he said, referring to the landmark court ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional.
“You don’t have to like it, but it’s the law,” my attorney friend continued.
The attorney is no Democrat. He’s not urban and he’s certainly not liberal. I have no idea how he feels about the morality of same-sex marriage. But he understands the law and how our system works.
There are similarities between the same-sex ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges, and the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that threw out the “separate but equal” justification for school desegregation.
Even the phrase “separate but equal” resonates in some Kentucky county clerks’ explanation of why their religious beliefs should allow them to refuse to grant marriage licenses. After all, they say, a couple can obtain the desired license simply by driving to a neighboring county – but they didn’t ask opposite-sex couples to do that until the court ruling.
The court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. But it was 1964 before the Glasgow schools I attended integrated. Significant social change sometimes doesn’t happen overnight.
There are likely to be others who resist the ruling of the court. Just like some did in the civil rights era, some are now calling for changes to our court system and decrying a decision by “five liberal, unelected lawyers” (never mind a majority of the court is conservative and was appointed by Republican presidents).

Like civil rights and abortion, there will probably be more court battles as some resist the ruling. But supporters of same-sex marriage can probably draw hope from the history of the civil rights battles and from the general trend of American history to enlarge and expand individual minority rights rather than restrict them.

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