Kentucky Republican Governor-elect Matt Bevin said that after he takes office on December 8, he will remove the county clerks' names from marriage licenses by an executive order to safeguard the religious rights of county clerks who may be opposed to same-sex marriages.
About eight weeks ago, county clerk Kim Davis was jailed for not complying with court orders to issue licenses to gay couples as the papers had her name on them, which appeared to suggest that she approved the unions which were actually against her Christian beliefs.
"One thing I will take care of right away is we will remove the names of the county clerks from the marriage forms," Bevin said at a news conference in Frankfort.
The outgoing governor, Steven L. Beshear (Democrat), had said that action from Legislature was need to alter the form, and that it was out of the powers of governor to enforce that single-handedly. He did not call a special legislative session to change the marriage licensing form, according to USA Today.
However, Bevin said: "The idea that cannot be done is baloney.. We've already changed those forms three times, for crying out loud. ... I do intend to make that change. We will take the names off of those forms. We will do that by executive order. We will do it right out of the gate."
He announced at the conference that the new changes will permit marriage licenses to be filed with a clerk just as other legal documents pertaining to deeds or mortgages, where government is the one who issues them, not the clerk.
Bevin has also argued that ideally a marriage license ought to be downloaded at will and then submitted to the government, and need not be a contract that government grants.
Rowan county clerk Davis became a national figure of opposition to granting of marriage licenses to same-sex couples, bearing clerks' name. She remained strong in her defiance to the orders of courts asking her to "do her job" and issue licenses. Her resistance caused a federal court to hold her in contempt of the court, which consequently led her to be jailed for five days in September. Her office continued to issue licenses through her deputy clerks.
Several other clerks, including from states of Alabama and Arkansas resisted issuing licenses to same-sex couples.
In Oregon, a county circuit judge Vance Day refused to perform same-sex marriages. He ceased presiding over all marriages and referred couples to other county judges. His spokesman, Patrick Korten said Day did not perform the marriages because of his "deeply held religious beliefs.. [and that he had] a right to those beliefs under the United States Constitution." Oregon Government Ethics Commission and Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability were reported to have conducted separate investigations on the judge following his decision.
In North Carolina, a law came into effect two months ago to allow magistrates to refrain from performing marriages if they chose to, following which over 30 magistrates refused to preside over same-sex unions, the Associated Press reported.
