Tonya Parker says until same-sex licenses are legal in Texas, she will not sign the forms.
(Photo: State of Texas)
A Black, openly lesbian Texas judge is refusing to conduct straight-couple marriage ceremonies in her state until same-sex couples can wed.
The judge, Tonya Parker, recently explained her decision during a Stonewall Democrats of Dallas monthly meeting.
“I do not perform them because it is not an equal application of the law. Period,” she said, reports the NY Daily News.
Parker says she is using her decision as an opportunity to give a lesson about marriage equality in the state.
“So I usually will offer them something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn’t apply to another group of people,'” she says.
Same-sex marriage licenses have been granted in six states: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington, D.C.
Conversely, in states that have approved gay marriage, clerks across the country have been in jeopardy of losing their jobs for refusing to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples.
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