Tennessee Allows Public Officials to Refuse to Grant Marriage Licenses

On Wednesday, the state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, signed a short bill that gave public officials the right to refuse to grant marriage licenses for any reason.

Short bill

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The legislation, called House Bill 878, is only a few sentences long. According to the bill, “a person shall not be required to solemnize a marriage.”

Justification

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“As societal views change about what constitutes a marriage, officiants must be able to refuse to solemnize marriages that are contrary to their beliefs,” Republican state Representative Monty Fritts said in February 2023.

Furthermore

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“Those with the authority to perform civil ceremonies would also be permitted to refuse to solemnize marriage for reasons of conscience,” Fritts elaborated.

The reasoning

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“The government has a responsibility to protect the exercise of religious beliefs,” Fritts claimed.

Unreasonable

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“Regardless of whether this bill was intended to target marriages of same-sex couples, interfaith couples, or interracial couples — it’s unconstitutional because the Constitution prohibits public officials from discriminating against members of the public based on their personal beliefs,” Camilla Taylor of Lambda Legal explained.

Not acceptable

“Government officials can’t target people based on who they are,” Taylor said.

Widespread campaign

The bill is part of an ongoing, nationwide reactionary campaign against LGBTQ+ rights. According to the Human Rights Campaign, Tennessee introduced more anti-LGBTQ+ laws than any other state in 2023.

Making life difficult

As Taylor explained, by allowing public officials to discriminate against same-sex couples, those couples might be forced to “use a different process to obtain a marriage license relative to everyone else.”

Explicit discrimination

“The effect of forcing same-sex couples to go through a different process relative to everyone else — whether by demanding that they use a different door, or that they wait for a different public official to issue them a license — [is] to stigmatize them and communicate that their government thinks their marriages are less worthy than everyone else’s,” Taylor said.

Ongoing battle

There is an ongoing dispute among religious communities over whether officials should officiate same-sex weddings. “A growing number of organized religious groups in the United States have issued statements officially welcoming LGBTQ+ people as members and extending marriage rites to them,” the Human Rights Campaign notes.

Controversy

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In 2022, Pew Research found that two-thirds of Americans believed that same-sex marriage was very or somewhat good for society. White evangelical protestants were the most opposed, with 71% saying the practice is a bad thing for society. Liberal Democrats were the most supportive, with 93% saying it was good.

Age difference

While people over 65 were evenly split over whether same-sex marriage was good for society, three-quarters of people aged 18-29 thought it was good — including 64% of young Republicans.

Education difference

Similarly, 51% of people with a high school diploma said same-sex marriage was a good thing for American society. Support increased with education, with postgrads supporting same-sex education by 71%. However, Republican postgrads were actually the least supportive of same-sex marriage, with just 40% supporting the practice, less than any other educational group.

Beyond Religion

The “meaning of marriage,” Dissent magazine explained in 2009, is not single. “Marriage has, first, a civil rights aspect. Married people get a lot of government benefits that the unmarried usually do not get: favorable treatment in tax, inheritance, and insurance status; immigration rights; rights in adoption and custody; decisional and visitation rights in health care and burial; the spousal privilege exemption when giving testimony in court; and yet others.”

Landmark ruling

In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that “the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-State.”