Amanda Scott and Christina Corvin celebrate after getting married in North Carolina
North Carolina magistrates won't be allowed to refuse to officiate all marriages as a way of getting out of officiating the same-sex ones, after Republican Gov. Pat McCrory
vetoed a bill that would have legalized such discrimination.
McCrory explained in a statement that allowing officials to pick and choose how they perform their sworn duties is not good law: “Whether it is the president, governor, mayor, a law enforcement officer, or magistrate, no public official who voluntarily swears to support and defend the Constitution and to discharge all duties of their office should be exempt from upholding that oath; therefore, I will veto Senate Bill 2.”
Though the bill was designed to create a way around performing same-sex marriages, its effect would have been equally as inconvenient for different-sex couples. Magistrates and Assistant Registers of Deeds would not have been able to pick and choose who they marry; they could only pick between all marriages and no marriages. If it was when a same-sex couple requested a marriage that they decided to stop performing the duty, that recusal would last for at least six months. And counties would still have had to provide somebody that could officiate marriages, even if all magistrates had recused under the policy.
It's pretty simple, really: If it's important to you not to do a key part of a job, that's not the job for you.
Doubtless the inconvenience to different-sex couples and the shining example of Gov. Mike Pence's Indiana made the decision to veto less difficult for McCrory.