By John Mack Freeman
One of the major stories this week is that same sex marriage will officially get underway in Florida this week due to a ruling that invalidated the state’s ban on same sex marriage. However, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi had appealed the ruling to the US Supreme Court asking for a stay. When the stay was denied earlier this week in a 7-2 split of the court (with Scalia and Thomas dissenting), the state was further thrown into confusion when some conservatives contended that the ruling only applied to the counties named in the original complaint. Bondi filed an 11th hour request for clarification from the original ruling judge.
That judge clarified his ruling by saying that it applied to all county clerks in the state of Florida. With this, the path to same sex marriages in Florida is full speed ahead.
However, just because justice has won out, that doesn’t mean that discrimination is over. In light of the decision (or because they saw the writing on the wall), 14 different counties have stopped performing courthouse weddings. The counties are: Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Holmes, Washington, Jackson, Calhoun, Liberty, Franklin, Wakulla, Baker, Clay, Duval and Pasco. Now, all couples must find a justice of the peace or other officiant to perform the wedding outside of the courthouse. While this applies equally to same sex and different sex couples, the animus appears to clearly point towards clerks and their staffs who were “uncomfortable” with performing same sex unions.
With this ruling, 71% of Americans now live in states where same sex marriage is the law of the land. Now to just get the other 29% taken care of.
