Thursday, July 2, 2015

Sole NE gay marriage refusenik among state's 93 county clerks just got a sharp letter from the ACLU

Michelle Zimmerman: Sioux County, NE clerk,
assessor, district court clerk, register of deeds,
election commissioner, budget authority, zoning
administrator and theocratic heterosexual
supremacist. Photo source.
Sioux County Clerk Michelle Zimmerman told the Scottsbluff Star-Herald on Tuesday that she would refuse licenses to same-sex couples because of her religious beliefs.
     On Wednesday, she refused to talk about her willingness to put herself above the law and expose her county to an expensive lawsuit, telling the Omaha World-Herald, that the issue is a "moot point."
     “I have not had anyone come in and ask for a same-sex marriage license and I’m not going to comment because it hasn’t happened,” Zimmerman said.
     She also seemed to believe there wasn’t much of a chance that a same-sex couple would walk into her office seeking a license.
     Ha! If she continues her autocratic ways, we at AKSARBENT strongly suspect that some gay couple in Nebraska will be making a road trip to her little fiefdom very, very soon.
     Heterosexual supremacist Zimmerman wields a great deal of power in Sioux County, where she serves — or rules — as the assessor, county clerk, district court clerk, election commissioner, register of deeds, budget authority and zoning administrator.
     Several county clerks in Nebraska have decided not to marry any more straight or gay couples (which they are not required to do) and several county clerks will refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples but say they will delegate that task to a deputy.
     Apparently, gay couples' ability to get a marriage license on a particular day in those counties will depend not on whether the office is open but on whether a particular person willing to serve them is available. This sounds legally indefensible to AKSARBENT, but we're not lawyers.
     Below is the letter that the Nebraska ACLU just sent Zimmerman. (We have no idea what Ms. Miller meant to say in the second sentence of the second-to-last paragraph.)

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