New York county clerk resigns over marriage equality
People in jobs that require public service without discrimination should resign if they refuse to perform their duties. I don’t imagine anyone is quitting their jobs at the Department of Motor Vehicles over having to issue driver’s licenses to lgbt people.
I have remained perplexed at the inability of so many of the anti-marriage crowd to grasp that it is a license. There is no such thing as a gay fishing license, and there is no such thing as a gay marriage license.
We should not be unkind to this woman, but I think leaving her job is for the best. Her religious beliefs are irrelevant to her position as a county clerk.
From Politics on the Hudson:
Laura Fotusky, the Republican town clerk in Barker, Broome County, submitted her resignation last night, saying she could not sign licenses for same-sex couples. Same-sex marriage becomes legal July 24. Her resignation is effective July 21.
“The Bible clearly teaches that God created marriage between male and female as a divine gift that preserves families and cultures. Since I love and follow Him, I cannot put my signature on something that is against God,” she wrote in her resignation letter, which was posted last night on the New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms’ website.
Fotusky is the first clerk to resign over the issue, but Jason McGuire, executive director of the anti-gay-marriage group New Yorkers For Constitutional Freedoms’ predicted, “This is just the tip of the iceberg.” He said the law should have exempted clerks who because of their religious beliefs do not want to recognize same-sex marriages.
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