June 30--REPORTING FROM HOUSTON -- When she opened her office Tuesday, Kimble County Clerk Haydee Torres faced a dilemma: how to respond to the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage ruling?
"I've been praying a lot about it for myself, just asking God to reveal to me," said Torres, 59. "You weigh it. Are you going to be afraid of getting sued, or are you more fearful of God?"
Across the country, officials charged with issuing same-sex marriage licenses and officiating weddings were wrestling with the same legal and moral dilemma.
In Texas, some clerks initially balked on procedural grounds, insisting their marriage license forms had not been updated for same-sex couples. Then over the weekend, the Department of State Health Services vital statistics unit issued revised new forms that replaced "male" and "female" with "applicant 1 and 2."
Jason White, 36, and fiance Jonathan Means, 28, both of Austin, drove about 100 miles northwest to Means' native San Saba County to get a marriage license Tuesday after hearing the clerk had refused.
"We thought that was foolish and instead of going to Austin we would go to his hometown, where he's from and where we want to have the ceremony anyway," White said.
When the couple arrived at the clerk's office, they were pleasantly surprised.
"They were expecting us and had the paperwork ready to go. They greeted Jonathan by name. They know who he is, know his family," White said, adding that the clerks were "extremely gracious and actually congratulated us on the way out."
San Saba County Atty. Randall Robinson said local officials had seen messages from Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton supporting religious objections to the law, but did not plan to oppose issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
"Our clerk will be issuing any license that is requested," Robinson said, adding, "It's just a transition period.... We're just a small county waiting for some direction from our state."
While clerks in the state's 15 most populous counties were issuing same-sex marriage licenses, a few resisted. They cite their religious beliefs and the nonbinding legal opinion issued over the weekend by Paxton, seconded by a state directive from Abbott.
Paxton wrote that county officials had a right to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples based on 1st Amendment religious liberty protections and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
"County clerks and their employees retain religious freedoms that may allow accommodation of their religious objections to issuing same-sex marriage licenses," he wrote. But he warned that they may be sued, and "the strength of any such claim depends on the particular facts of each case."
The Kimble County seat is in Junction, about 115 miles northwest of San Antonio. First thing Tuesday, Torres called the county attorney. Then she waited, unsure what she would do if a same-sex couple walked in and requested a license.
"A decision hasn't been made yet. I haven't had anybody come in yet. I have an employee who is willing, and one who is not. I read the attorney general's opinion, which is pretty wishy-washy," Torres said.
Torres, a Republican, has been county clerk since 2003. She's Baptist, and when it comes to same-sex marriage, said, "I am religiously opposed to it."
She told her pastor about the Supreme Court ruling but didn't get a chance to ask his advice. A son of one of her deputy clerks is a minister and has sent the clerks Scripture about the issue, she said.
"In the end, a sin is a sin. But you still have to love the sinner. We all sin," Torres said.
She went online to see what other clerks were doing. Clerks have been issuing licenses to same-sex couples in all the big cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
But clerks in more rural, Baptist areas have refused or delayed.
"There's been a lot of chatter.... I'm not going to say it's not going to happen here, but we're not going to have them beating down the door," Torres said.
The Liberty Institute, a conservative legal advocacy group based in the Dallas area, was advising county officials on how to respond Tuesday, but had no information about legal battles brewing.
Chuck Smith, executive director of the Austin-based gay advocacy group Equality Texas, said the organization was working to educate county officials about the ruling rather than rushing to sue them.
"More than 80% of the population of Texas lives in places that are issuing licenses," he said.
"Many of these clerks are in jurisdictions where they may not have access to any significant legal resources," Smith said. "We would be hopeful that once there's a clear illumination of what the consequences would be, that clerks would understand their obligations."
In the Texas Panhandle, Lipscomb County Clerk Kim Blau said she had not decided Tuesday what she would do if a same-sex couple requested a marriage license.
"I'm going to cross that bridge when there's a couple that's at my counter wanting to have one," said Blau, a Republican.
For Torres, the decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses boiled down to a conflict of church and state, her personal beliefs versus her oath of office.
"It puts you in a difficult position," she said. "As my husband said, your oath said you have to do your job. So you're in a Catch-22."
In Hood County, southwest of Fort Worth, County Clerk Katie Lang posted a statement online saying she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses "due to my religious convictions."
She cited Paxton's legal opinion that "although it fabricated a new constitutional right in 2015, the Supreme Court did not diminish, overrule or call into question the 1st Amendment rights to free exercise of religion that formed the first freedom in the Bill of Rights in 1791. This newly invented federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage should peaceably coexist alongside longstanding constitutional and statutory rights, including the rights to free exercise of religion and speech."
In Coldspring, about 65 miles north of Houston, San Jacinto County Clerk Dawn Wright, also a Republican, said Tuesday that she would not issue same-sex marriage licenses "for religious reasons and as a matter of conscience."
But Wright said that didn't mean her office would not license same-sex couples.
"On the heels of this landmark decision, Dawn was sent into a tailspin, and she quickly began working on a solution to this dilemma," she said in a statement.
"Clerk Wright checked with each one of her six deputy clerks, in order to get their individual perspectives on this issue. Mrs. Wright was not going to trample the religious rights of her subordinates by delegating the duty to someone who held the same religious beliefs as her," the statement said.
"After checking with her employees, Mrs. Wright established that five of her six employees held similar beliefs," but "the one deputy who 'has no problem with it' will, subsequently, be delegated the responsibility," the statement said.
The statement also said Wright was grateful that "we live in a state where religious freedom can extend beyond the home and church into our everyday life," and that state leaders "wholeheartedly support religious liberty in Texas."
In Bell County, north of Austin and home to Ft. Hood, County Clerk Shelley Coston issued a statement saying her office will issue same-sex marriage licenses but will make similar accommodations for employees with religious objections.
Coston, a Republican elected in 2007, said she made the decision in part because of a fear of lawsuits.
"The costs of defending such a lawsuit and the potential for damages would be substantial," she said. "I cannot do that to our taxpayers."
She noted that "being county clerk in any county in Texas is a ministerial position. Ministerial is defined as 'an act or a function that conforms to an instruction or a prescribed procedure. A ministerial act or duty is a function performed without the use of judgment by the person performing the act or duty.'"
Back in Junction, Torres was still trying to decide what to do. She was worried about potential lawsuits. Her employees have religious objections similar to her own, she said, but "I have a deputy who's willing to do it so we don't get sued. ... We're not going to break the law."
"I have a call in to our county attorney, and I don't know if he's available or not. From everything I'm hearing, the law is pretty clear," the county clerk said. "I do have a problem with the religious aspect of it because I know what the Bible says. But we're going to do what our attorney advises. ... We're going to get through it. It's just going to be hard."
