It doesn’t matter what the Kentucky statute says. SCOTUS doesn’t care about what Kentuckians or Georgians or any person living in the US believes about gay marriage. They (incorrectly) claimed that the 14th Amendment trumps millions of votes.
Once they did that, the gay marriage debate was pretty much lost for all practical purposes. In theory, Congress could either take away jurisdiction from the courts on that issue or create a law to circumvent the ruling. The only other mechanism is a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman.
Kentucky can try to get out of the marriage license issuance business all together, but they’d probably lose that argument because SCOTUS claimed marriage to be a “fundamental right.”
That’s about it as far as our options are at this point.
Unfortunately, this clerk has no authority at this point to disobey. All discretion has been taken away from her by SCOTUS. For her not to issue marriage licenses in a state where licenses are issued in every other county is in contravention of the laws of the state. She is not a legislature.
Her job is to uphold the Constitutions of Kentucky and the US. As perverse, disgusting and anti-Federalist the SCOTUS decision is, Neil/Bob marriages are legal now. Marriage is somehow a “fundamental right.” (It really is NOT a right in my opinion, it’s a construct of state, not federal, law but like that clerk, I have zero authority to change that SCOTUS ruling.)
As such, this clerk has no authority to pick and choose who she gives out licenses to and can not refuse to give out licenses all together. None of us like this, but it is what it is at this point.
Bull (Obama)
Was the SCOTUS decision legal? No.
Did it violate the Constitution? Yes.
“When human laws contradict or discountenance the means, which are necessary to preserve the essential rights of any society, they defeat the proper end of all laws, and so become null and void.”
— Alexander Hamilton
Mrs. Davis had the OBLIGATION and DUTY to stand up to tyranny and injustice.
“[T]he Law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions must . . . be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e., to the will of God. [L]aws human must be made according to the general laws of Nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made.”
— John Locke, Two Treatises on Government