Kansas seeks to block county gay marriage licenses

Topeka, Kan. (AP) — Kansas' most populous county issued a same-sex marriage license Friday to a couple who quickly wed, but just hours later the attorney general asked the state Supreme Court to immediately block all such licenses from being granted.

The petition from Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the chief district court judge in Johnson County exceeded his authority in ordering clerks and other judges to approve marriage applications from gay couples, given that the Kansas Constitution bans gay marriage.

Judge Kevin Moriarty issued his order after the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to hear appeals from five other states seeking to preserve their gay-marriage bans. The states included Utah and Oklahoma, which are in the same federal appeals court circuit as Kansas, but there is no pending federal or state lawsuit directly challenging Kansas' ban on gay marriage.

Schmidt said his goal is to "freeze the status quo in place until the legal dispute can be properly resolved."

"I am a strong advocate for an orderly resolution of this dispute in a way that will be accepted by all parties as legally correct and that allows the state to defend its constitutional provision and its laws," Schmidt told The Associated Press just before his office filed the petition.

The license even being granted, though, marked a milestone in Kansas. Johnson County Court Clerk Sandra McCurdy confirmed that the license was issued and that the couple married shortly after receiving it but declined to identify them. It wasn't clear if Kansas would recognize the marriage.

Wedding plans for gay couples across Kansas were in limbo, with nearly all of the state's 105 counties refusing to issue marriage licenses. In Riley County in northeast Kansas, a gay couple whose application for a marriage license had been accepted Thursday learned Friday that a judge had denied it.

Some counties initially refused to even hand out marriage license paperwork to same-sex couples, until the lawyer for the Kansas Office of Judicial Administration told chief judges Tuesday that counties should accept the applications and noted that litigation was likely. The American Civil Liberties Union expected to file a federal lawsuit soon to block enforcement of the state's ban.

Gov. Sam Brownback, a conservative Republican who is in a tight race for re-election, supports the ban and says it should be defended in court. He said he supports Schmidt's move "to avoid the confusion created by inconsistent judicial rulings."

"An overwhelming majority of Kansas voters amended the Constitution to include a definition of marriage as one man and one woman," Brownback said in a statement. "Activist judges should not overrule the people of Kansas."

Tom Witt, executive director of the gay-rights group Equality Kansas, said in a statement that Brownback and Schmidt "need to stop playing election-year politics with people's lives and allow these legal marriages to proceed."

"The federal courts have ruled, and we all know how this will end," he said. "Delaying the inevitable is a waste of time and taxpayer money, and a gross injustice to LGBT Kansans and their families."

By late Thursday afternoon, Johnson County had accepted 42 applications from same-sex couples. State law imposes a three-day waiting period.

Johnson County, with about 567,000 residents, or nearly 20 percent of the state's population, is home to affluent Kansas City suburbs. It is a Republican stronghold and regularly elects some of the state's most conservative lawmakers.

But the GOP there also is split between conservatives and moderates — and several moderate GOP senators were vocal critics of the ban on gay marriage before lawmakers placed it on the ballot in 2005.

by John Hanna, AP Political Writer

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The Gayly – October 10, 2014 @ 4:15pm