Democratic Sen. John Fetterman offered to take a trip to Tennessee to officiate gay weddings after anti-gay legislation was recently passed.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed anti-LGBTQ marriage House Bill 878 on Wednesday.
While the bill does not allow officials to deny marriage licenses to gay couples, it does offer them the right to refuse to perform the ceremony.
HB 878 won’t force officiants to “solemnize a marriage if the person has an objection” due to their personal “conscience or religious beliefs.”
To any same-sex couples in Tennessee, it would be my pleasure to travel to your beautiful state and officiate your wedding. DM me. https://t.co/m2oDG1IuBu
— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) February 23, 2024
“To any same-sex couples in Tennessee, it would be my pleasure to travel to your beautiful state and officiate your wedding. DM me,” Fetterman tweeted in response to the bill receiving the Republican governor’s stamp of approval.
“Whether against the law in 2013 or in 2024, I stand for marriage equality,” Fettermen wrote in a follow-up post.
In the second tweet, he linked a 2013 article to when he was the mayor of Braddock Pennsylvania and hadmarried several same-sex couples while it was still against the law.
The first marriage he officiated was the first gay marriage in Allegheny County, and the Pennsylvania Heath Department threatened to arrest him for his actions at the time.
Fetterman blasted the Supreme Court’s decision on 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, which stated that the state of Colorado cannot force an artist to create work that violates their values.
Website designer Lorie Smith sued Colorado in 2016, in an effort to block enforcement of the anti-discrimination law that would disallow her from refusing services to gay patrons.
When then the court ruled in favor of Smith in June 2023, Fetterman released a scathing statement about the 6-3 decision.
“On the last day of Pride Month, an extremist and unelected SCOTUS uses a made-up case to hand out a “constitutional” right to discriminate against LGBTQ people,” he wrote. “What an embarrassment for our country.”
Fetterman stated that the court had “sunk to a new low” and claimed that the majority of justices were acting “like politicians advancing their partisan views, not independent judges.”
“Today’s ruling is despicable. It is a full-on assault on LGBTQ people in America,” he concluded.
“Everyone in America deserves equal protection under the law, and I will not stop fighting until that is achieved.”
What makes him legal to preform Marriages in Tenn. ???
Really, why??