Perry (Rumpelstiltskin), for your viewing pleasure:
July 1, 2015: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has deemed state employees exempt from granting same-sex couples with marriage licenses if it violates their religious beliefs. Conservative lawmakers in Tennessee have started drafting legislation that would protect religious leaders from being forced to preside over same-sex marriages. Utah and Mississippi are considering doing away with state-issued marriage licenses, while county clerks in Kentucky and Alabama have already taken it upon themselves to stop granting licenses altogether.
While such pushback looks poised to provoke legal action, constitutional law expert Greg Magarian, a professor of law at Washington University, said that most of these state efforts are “the political equivalent of temper tantrums,” attention-getting yet extremely difficult to implement.
“You can stand in the corner and hold your breath until you’re blue in the face, but people in your state will still be signing up for Obamacare, only now you’ve given the authority over it to the federal government,” Magarian said. From a political perspective, he said, daring the federal government to takeover a long-held state responsibility like marriage would be “a strategically stupid move.”