Posted on 10/06/2011 5:50:34 PM PDT by neverdem
Much Ado About Nothing?
Ledyard, N.Y.'s town clerk may be well within her rights.
When New York legalized same-sex marriage in June, Rose Marie Belforti, the town clerk in Ledyard, N.Y., faced a dilemma: Either betray her Christian faith by granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples, or resign. Or at least that’s the choice same-sex-marriage advocates gave her. Instead, Belforti devised a compromise: She asked a deputy to sign all marriage licenses for her, so the town could obey the law, and she could keep her job.
But for Deirdre DiBiaggio and Katie Carmichael, that wasn’t good enough.
In August, the lesbian couple trekked to town hall to request a license. Belforti told them they’d have to make an appointment and return on a day when a deputy was available. Upset by the delay, the couple accused Belforti of discriminating against them, and they enlisted the People for the American Way Foundation and the law firm Proskauer Rose, LLP in their cause. Although the couple has yet to file charges, Drew Courtney, director of communications for the foundation, tells NRO, “We’re exploring that possibility.”
“Couples shouldn’t get turned away because of a clerk’s religious beliefs,” he says. “She’s trying to sidestep an entire area of her duties.”
Last month, James Gregory, an attorney with Proskauer, sent Belforti and Mark Jordan, the town supervisor, a letter, in which he demanded that the town council direct Belforti to issue the license or resign. But the council declined. “The clerk runs her own office. We cannot force her,” Jordan said at a town-council meeting.
To bolster his case, Gregory included a copy of a memo on the law that the state department of health sent to all town clerks in July. “No application for a marriage license shall be denied on the ground that the parties are of the same or a different sex,” the memo warned. In addition, Gregory cited Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who, while speaking on the issue, said, “When you enforce the laws of the state you don’t get to pick and choose the laws.”
But Belforti isn’t picking which laws to enforce, she’s merely changing how she enforces them, says Holly Carmichael, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which will assist Belforti in the event of litigation. Carmichael notes that in a New York Times article on the controversy, Katie Carmichael (no relation) complains, “To have her basically telling us to get in the back of the line is just not acceptable.”
“They were actually just asked to stand in line,” Carmichael quips. Because Belforti requires all couples — heterosexual and homosexual — to make appointments with a deputy to receive their licenses, Carmichael argues she’s well within the law. “Perhaps they just don’t understand that in small towns you can’t get exactly what you want when you come in,” Carmichael says.
Furthermore, Carmichael points to a state statute that allows town clerks to appoint deputies to grant marriage licenses. Domestic Relations Law § 15(3) reads:
Notwithstanding any other provisions of this article, the clerk of any city with the approval of the governing body of such city is hereby authorized to designate, in writing filed in the city clerk’s office, a deputy clerk, if any, and/or other receive applications for, examine applications, investigate and issue marriage licenses in the absence or inability of the clerk of said city to act, and said deputy and/or employees so designated are hereby vested with all the powers and duties of said city clerk relative thereto.
If state law allows Belforti to appoint a deputy, and she requires all couples to follow the same procedure, it’s difficult to see on what grounds the couple would lay their case. It’s also easier to see the uproar over Belforti’s decision as the knee-jerk reaction of an intolerant Left.
— Brian Bolduc is a reporter for National Review Online.
Get ready for a couple of homos to show up somewhere in their military uniforms and then throw a tantrum that some clerk was “unpatriotic” because she was disrepectful to a couple of “military servicemen” by refusing to sign a “marriage” license. It’s coming. We deserve everything we get for allowing this to happen. Elections do have consequences.
agreed the insane policy of allowing these homosexuals to serve needs to be overturned as soon as possible.
We should not have allowed them civil unions because form that they sued it as a platform to further their agenda and look where it got us by agreeing to give them that
two homo women went to Catholic charities to get a child but was told they could not as it violated their religion.
They went to court and won and now children do not get adopted off this group because they had to close down in the state of MA.
These two homo’s could have gone anywhere to get a child but they chose this group because they looked to attack the church.
I think that they never got a child after their law suit either so it was all staged.
It is time now to say enough is enough, 15 years ago you wanted privacy and we gave you that, but instead the right appeased them and now look at what is happening
They will now use the openly serving homo law to attack DOMA by saying they can get married in the military, they can die and fight but cannot be married in their state therefore overturn DOMA and you know what?
We’ll still have dopes on the right saying so what
More than likely, they never intended to adopt a child. It’s the way the homos work. Look what they did at the debate. They had one of their useful idiots exploit his military service to throw the repeal of DADT in the faces of the Republican candidates. This never was about “serving their country”. This is about shoving homosexuality down the throats of normal Americans just as they did with ObamaCare.
nail on head, well said.
****This never was about “serving their country”. This is about shoving homosexuality down the throats of normal Americans just as they did with ObamaCare.****
The same with homo marriage. It allowed homos to flex their muscle under cover of law. They will find marriage confining to the homo lifestyle and then start playing around like before they got together.
Whatever happened to respect for conscience?
'Take Away His Vote' Dem Rep Wants To Nullify Justice Thomas' Rulings With 'Retroactive Recusal' Rep. Louise Slaughter
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Bingo. It’s all about them, always.
The homo agenda is about criminalizing religion. First driving them from any public job, then throwing the dissenters in jail for their faith. Objecting to homosexuality is now a hate crime.
Yep. And it’s not going to get any better in the future.
Seriously speaking, it’s like the Christians against the Muslims. Turning the other cheek doesn’t work because they are perfectly happy to slash that one open, and then aim for the throat.
The homosexuals do not want “peaceful coexistence”, they want total victory. They will not be satisfied until their orientation is deemed superior to heterosexuals and it is considered a hate crime even to refuse a homosexual’s desire for sex.
Think I’m joking? Try this scenario on for size. PFC Honeybuns waits until he and one other soldier are alone in a shower, sidles over and requests a little loving.
The other soldier politely declines.
PFC Honeybuns then informs the soldier that if he doesn’t, he’s going to go on report for using homophopic slurs. Since there are only the two of them in the shower it will be the homosexual’s word against the straight — and as the newest totally protected minority, guess who the brass is going to believe.
Trust me, it’s going to happen soon, if it hasn’t already happened. And it’s just going to get worse from there — until and unless we start pushing back.
It got trumped.
What? “People for the American Way Foundation”??
To society, the homosexual community are no different than any bully, punk, rebel, or imp who is determined to undermine society, authority, or anyone else who won’t give them their way to do whatever they want to do...no matter WHAT it is, or WHO it offends. When they can’t get their way, they find someone who will do that for them. Their behavior is characteristic of these things. Yet, WE are the bigots.
Just their attacking of the church, and their LACK of principle by doing so, speaks volumes as to what we are dealing with, does it not?
Jesus WARNED us about this coming to pass. The same as ALL things He warns us about coming to pass, if we allow these deceptions to take ROOT in our lives. And now, in today’s society, because of man’s rejection of God, and their lust for the devil, we are now facing the consequences of those transgressions. It’s a very simple assessment.
Rose Marie Belforti, did NOTHING but shine light where there was darkness.
This world, is evil. And dying.
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Accomodating and compromising with evil is one of the surest paths to hell known. Evil must be fought from the very beginning. Those pushing evil are driven like mad dogs and they will never give up. Compromising with those pushing the homosexual agenda means giving them ultimate victory. It's time to stop compromising the the homo-agenda and it looks as though it's up to us little people.
The argument homosexuals and their misguided friends make about “homosexual marriage” is:
“Who care what people do in their bedrooms”.
Then let the homosexuals get married in their bedrooms and only be married in their bedrooms.
Otherwise I care.
It's an executive order. Congress never passed it. But that said, as the policy of not letting them serve at all, and so was "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The only thing that IS a law is the UCMJ's section on sodomy.
§ 925. Art. 125. Sodomy
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration , however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.
(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
So certain non-penetrative forms of homosexual behavior are not violations, and some forms of heterosexual behavior are. Not sure if getting/giving a Lewinsky is a violation The UCMJ doesn't explicitly discriminate against homosexuality, as you can see from (a) above.
Of course gay and lesbian groups are pressing for the repeal of Art 125.
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