Texas’ conservative Republican attorney general called the US Supreme Court decision giving same-sex couples the right to marry a “lawless ruling” and said state workers can cite their religious objections in denying marriage licenses.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement on Sunday that any clerk, justice of the peace or other administrator who declines to issue a license to a same-sex couple could face litigation or a fine.
However, in the nonbinding legal opinion requested by Republican Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Paxton said “numerous lawyers” stand ready to defend — free of charge — any public official refusing to grant one.
In its 5-4 opinion on Friday, the US Supreme Court did nothing to eliminate rights of religious liberty, Paxton’s wrote in the opinion.
“This newly minted federal Constitutional right to same-sex marriage can and should peaceably coexist with long-standing Constitutional and statutory rights, including the rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech,” Paxton wrote.
While many Republicans have said they disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling, officials in most states have said that they would abide by it.
Paxton’s comments echoed those on Friday of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who said Texans cannot be forced by the court ruling to act contrary to their religious beliefs.
In his two-page memo, Abbott told agency leaders that no one in their ranks could take “adverse action” against someone acting on their religious beliefs, including “granting or denying benefits.”
That led to confusion and questions over whether state agencies might deny health or retirement benefits to the spouses of gay employees.
Abbott spokesman John Wittman issued a clarifying statement on Friday, saying that the directive does not order the denial of benefits to same-sex couples.
Since Friday’s ruling, a US federal district court in Texas has prohibited Texas from enforcing state laws that define marriage as exclusively a union between one man and one woman.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS