As top U.S. court weighs gay marriage, limited backlash brews in states

By Lawrence Hurley
Reuters
WASHINGTON - Even as North Carolina on Thursday enacted a law allowing officials to refuse involvement in same-sex marriages on religious grounds, similar efforts by conservatives in other states have fizzled ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court decision due this month on whether to legalize gay marriage nationwide.
Republican state lawmakers around the nation in recent months have introduced a raft of bills targeting gay marriage and gay rights amid expectations that the top U.S. court will find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Of 55 bills in 21 states that could have some bearing on gay marriage, the vast majority have failed to become law, indicating that any backlash to a Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage could be limited.
Five of those proposals, including two enacted on Thursday in North Carolina and Michigan, have become law to date, with many state legislative sessions now over for the year.
The Michigan law allows religiously affiliated adoption agencies to deny service on religious grounds. Gay rights groups said it would allow discrimination against same-sex couples seeking to adopt.
Conservative activists say similar efforts to allow religious objections to gay marriage will continue regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.
‘Throw a wedding cake’
“When we talk to groups of state policymakers, I can’t throw a wedding cake without hitting someone who wants to introduce a bill protecting marriage,” said Quena Gonzalez, director of state and local affairs at the Family Research Council, a Christian advocacy group opposed to same-sex marriage.
Gay rights activists say the fact that bills have not received widespread backing is further indication of a growing acceptance of same-sex marriage across the country, as indicated in opinion polls.
“It really shows that the country as a whole does not support using legislation to discriminate against people,” said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Rose Saxe.
Bills seeking directly to undermine gay marriage, introduced in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama, all fell by the wayside this year.
The Texas legislation would have prevented clerk’s offices from using tax money to issue licenses for same-sex weddings. The Oklahoma proposal would have removed the state’s role in issuing marriage licenses altogether. The Alabama bill would have completely eliminated marriage licenses issued by the state, instead requiring couples, both gay and straight, to enter into legally binding contracts with one another.
The bills that have been signed into law mostly had a less direct link to marriage and several were watered down after objections from gay rights advocates and the business community.
The law enacted in North Carolina is one of 22 state “marriage refusal” bills identified by the ACLU. It became law after the Republican-led legislature overrode Republican Governor Pat McCrory’s veto.
It allows state officials who otherwise might perform a marriage or issue a marriage license to refuse to do so if they have a “sincerely held religious objection.”
Only one state, Utah, passed a similar bill this year. It was amended prior to being signed into law in March after pressure from gay rights groups and the business community. Neither law would prevent same-sex couples from getting married.
The Michigan law is one of three so-called religious freedom laws to have been enacted this year. The others were in Indiana and Arkansas.
Due in part to objections from business leaders, the Indiana and Arkansas measures, which were broader than the Michigan law, were amended over concerns they could allow companies to discriminate against gay people. Similar efforts in other states then foundered.
Prior to this year, 19 states already had religious freedom laws on the books, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Same-sex marriage is now legal in 36 of the 50 states. In a 37th, Alabama, a federal court struck down the gay-marriage ban but the state supreme court has stopped local officials from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.