NORTH CAROLINA: Local Hate Group Tells Officials To Refuse To Marry Gay Couples

Via the Charlotte Observer:

A group that backed a North Carolina constitutional amendment on gay marriage is telling public officials that they can refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses in their counties. The North Carolina Values Coalition sent an email Saturday to the state’s registers of deeds saying that their religious and moral beliefs are protected by federal and state constitutions. Registers of deeds issue marriage, birth and death certificates. They document real estate transactions and handle military discharge recordings. The officials can refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses by claiming their “First Amendment right not to violate their religious beliefs,” the coalition’s email states. Advocates of same-sex marriages balked at the assertion. Chris Brook, legal director for the ACLU of North Carolina, said every level of the federal court system has sided with same-sex marriages, and there was “no un-ringing of the wedding bells.” He said a few officials made a similar argument in the 1970s, when they said it was against their religion to marry an interracial couple.

The haters based their email on a statement by Alliance Defending Freedom. Of course.

RELATED: Enjoy their whopping case of the sadz.

The responsibility for this mess of shoving same-sex “marriage” on 30 states in our country lies with the US Supreme Court for striking down the federal definition of marriage in the Windsor case last summer and then refusing last Monday to take any of the five appeals from states whose Marriage Amendments have been struck down by lower federal judges as a result of Windsor. The destruction of natural marriage as a public institution and the American family can be blamed on the US Supreme Court. Same-sex marriage in our State is unthinkable, since just two short years ago voters overwhelmingly voted by 61% in a ballot referendum to recognize in our State Constitution that natural marriage is indeed the union of only a man and a woman. The actions of these unelected federal judges exceeds the enumerated powers given to our federal government in the 10th Amendment. It also overturns about two hundred years of legal precedent that it is the states themselves that have the power to recognize the true meaning of marriage. Instead, these liberal activist judges have fabricated a new constitutional right to same-sex “marriage.” These illogical rulings are in essence saying that our Constitution always has included a right to same-sex “marriage.” I bet Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would be surprised.