NORTH CAROLINA: States Debunks GOP Lies That Magistrates Can Refuse Gays

Via the Asheville Citizen-Times:

The chief administrator of North Carolina's courts says Republican party leaders may have misled magistrates on whether they could refrain from performing same-sex marriages. John Smith, director of the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts, detailed his concerns in a three-page letter to Senate leader Phil Berger, who along with more than two dozen Senate Republicans had asked in an Oct. 24 letter that he revise a directive ordering magistrates to perform civil weddings for gay couples or face losing their jobs. "I am concerned that the widespread publicity may have misled magistrates as to their legal rights and remedies and that some may have relied to their detriment on its representations," Smith wrote in the Nov. 5 letter to Berger. "The law is now clear that any magistrate who does officiate over marriages must comply with the court rulings mandating equal treatment as to same-sex marriages," Smith wrote.

"Misled" is the polite way of saying "totally fucking lied."