Kentucky clerks slammed as ‘Jim Crow’ for differentiating marriage licenses - choice VS race?
A leading
LGBT website is bashing Kentucky clerks for wanting to differentiate between
same-sex and opposite-sex couples when issuing marriage licenses.
Earlier this
week, the investigative website MuckRock.com published
more than 400 e-mails from embattled Kentucky
clerk Kim Davis. Those e-mails showed that 54 of the state's 93 clerks
preferred to have separate marriage licenses for same-sex and opposite-sex
couples.
"'Separate
but equal,' the same old Jim Crow argument that was used to defend 'whites
only' lunch counters and segregated schools, has resurfaced," wrote
Contributing Editor Jean Esselink for The New Civil Rights Movement (TNCRM).
"The words may be different but the underlying concept is the same, except
that this time it's being used by Kentucky county clerks who would like to make
marriages by same-sex couples separate but equal to marriages by heterosexuals."
Homosexuality is a choice - race is not.
However,
results of a Kentucky County Clerk Association survey published by MuckRock
show that clerks were struggling with how to properly address the issues of
gender and spousal identification, not creating bigoted policies against
same-sex couples.
For example,
the group's president advised all clerks to follow the Supreme Court's ruling
even as gender distinctions and other issues were decided upon.
The
association ended up conducting a survey examining six options of how to
identify couples. Two clerks voted to keep traditional, accurate spousal
identifiers of "bride" and "groom" on all certificates,
while nine voted to change only one spouse's identifier.
Twenty-four
clerks wanted to outsource the licensing to a website, with fees collected by
clerks, while three wanted online licensing with no fees.
However, 54
backed the idea of having marriage licenses for opposite-sex couples with the
traditional gender distinction, as well as a second license option for same-sex
couples.
TNCRM founder
and publisher David Badash did not respond to a request for comment as to
whether he stood behind Esselink's analogy, which is common among same-sex
"marriage" advocates who claim that objections to redefining marriage
are based upon the same bigotry and discriminatory mindset as Jim Crow-era
cultural and legal racism.
