Gay Texas judge, Tonya Parker, won’t perform marriages for straight couples
Rheana Murray
(Feb. 2012)
An openly gay Texas judge says she refuses to conduct marriage ceremonies for straight couples until same-sex couples can also wed.
Dallas County Judge Tonya Parker explained her decision Tuesday at a monthly meeting for the Stonewall Democrats of Dallas.
“I do not perform them because it is not an equal application of the law. Period,” she said, according to the Dallas Voice, a newspaper for the gay community.
Parker told the audience that while she refuses to conduct the ceremonies, she explains her reasoning to the couples and passes them along to another judge.
“I use it as my opportunity to give them a lesson about marriage equality in the state because I feel like I have to tell them why I’m turning them away,” she said.
“So I usually will offer them something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn’t apply to another group of people.
“And it’s kind of oxymoronic for me to perform ceremonies that can’t be performed for me, so I’m not going to do it,” she added.
Same-sex marriage is not legal in Texas.
Parker is believed to be the first openly gay African-American elected official in the history of the state, according to NBC News.
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