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Kentucky couple explain why they twice filmed being denied a marriage license
All they wanted was a marriage license.
But instead, Kentucky couple David Moore and David Ermold find themselves at the center of a national controversy involving the clerk of their county who refuses to issue licenses to same-sex couples based on her religious beliefs.
The humiliating scene involving being forced to wait and police being called and finally being refused a marriage license by Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis went viral after it was posted on YouTube.
‘We wanted to document it,’ Ermold tells Slate.com. ‘The only way you have any power as a citizen is to document your experience. If you go in and nobody sees it, people can say, that didn’t happen the way you said it happened. We didn’t go in and make a scene. We went in and did a mundane thing that people do every day. The way we were treated, that’s up to the [courthouse employees]. They chose to act that way.’
The couple were refused a license despite same-sex marriage being legal in all 50 states after a US Supreme Court ruling in June.
‘David didn’t put that video up on YouTube right away,’ Moore says. ‘We talked about it, thought about it. When we put that up there, we didn’t anticipate it was going to get as much of a response as it did.
‘We didn’t doctor it or edit the video,’ he adds. ‘That’s just the way it happened. It is hard to watch. I haven’t watched the second video. I can’t watch it. It’s too upsetting.’
Davis lost a battle in federal court last week when a judge ruled that her religious beliefs could not legally be used as a reason to not perform the duties she pledged to do when she took the oath of office.
But the judge stayed his decision pending appeal so licenses are still not being issued by the clerk’s office in Rowan County where Ermold and Moore live.
Moore and Ermold, who have been together for 17 years, returned to the clerk’s office after the judge’s ruling last week and were once again refused by Davis’ staff.
They filmed that tense encounter as well.
The post Kentucky couple explain why they twice filmed being denied a marriage license appeared first on Gay Star News.
Greg Hernandez
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