When gay marriage comes to Georgia, we probably won't be Alabama – where Roy Moore, that state's chief justice, encouraged county court officials to defy the U.S. Supreme Court and withhold marriage licenses from same-sex couples.
But don’t think the fight is over. Not here, and not in Washington.
The Council of Probate Judges of Georgia has quietly put out the word that whatever the nation’s high court says this summer – when justices are expected to decide the issue — will be the law in Georgia courthouses.
Given the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to delay gay marriage in Alabama, even religious conservatives are presuming that the legal battle has been lost.
“The primary advice we have been giving our judges is, you’ve sworn to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States and the state of Georgia,” said Chase Daughtrey, probate judge for Cook County and president of the council. “If the Supreme Court says it is unconstitutional, and requires us to issue the licenses, we have to adhere to the law and what they view as constitutional.”
It is advice only, of course. These are individually elected officials.
Even so, the state’s probate judges will gather in Decatur next week, during which they’ll discuss the nitty-gritty decisions that come with a major cultural shift. Such as the rewriting of marriage license applications.
This law-and-order position received an endorsement this week from a major leader in the culture wars: the Rev. Russell Moore, top ethicist for the Southern Baptist Convention. Moore advised those probate judges in Alabama to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling – or resign.
It was a highly nuanced position that bears study, because it tells us where we’re headed next in the battle over gay marriage. For regardless of what happens in probate courts across the state, Georgia is about to become part of the rearguard opposition to same-sex unions.
Wrote Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission:
"We shouldn't have officials breaking the law, but civil servants don't surrender their conscience simply by serving in government…[I]n the absence of any conscience protections, a government employee, faced with a decision of violating his conscience or upholding the law, would need to resign and protest against it as a citizen if he could not discharge the duties of his office."
So “conscience protection,” to borrow Moore’s phrasing, is about to become the second front in the national fight over gay marriage.
At a state level, we have two “religious liberty” bills now in the Legislature that appear ready to serve this purpose – despite protests from their authors that the measures have nothing to do with same-sex unions. Passage of one bill or the other seems likely.
But a national campaign is also underway, and it appears that Georgia will have a piece of that, too.
Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist who advised Alabama judges to stand down, is pushing for passage of a federal “Marriage and Religious Freedom Act” that would offer legal protection to a person “who acts on his believe that marriage should be limited to a man and a woman.”
Just by coincidence, six of our Republican members of Congress this week expressed an interest in Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s January sacking of his fire chief. Their joint letter officially demanded the reinstatement of Kelvin Cochran, who was fired for failing to follow city protocol in publishing a religious book that condemned homosexuality.
But the congressmen also appeared to be signaling their willingness to take the issue to a national level.
On Wednesday, a group called the Alliance Defending Freedom announced that it had filed a federal lawsuit on Cochran’s behalf, alleging he had been fired for his religious beliefs.
A press conference was held in the state Capitol. I asked David Cortman, Cochran’s attorney, whether his client’s lawsuit is part of the next phase of the gay marriage fight.
Absolutely, he said. “There have been several situations across the country dealing with photographers, florists, bakers. So the short answer is, yes, it’s already happening. And it will continue to do so,” Cortman said. “No one should be forced to violate his faith, in any adult circumstance.”
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