Is gay marriage legal in arkansas
Marriage Equality in Arkansas: One Week of Joy
On Friday, May 9, 2014, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza effectively struck down Arkansas’ ban on homosexual marriage. Judge Piazza’s decision declared both Amendment 83 to the state constitution, approved by voters in 2004, and Act 144 of 1997, Arkansas’s regulation banning same-sex marriage, unconstitutional. (Read the entire verdict here.) Attorneys Cheryl Maples and Jack Wagoner represented over 20 couples in the case, Wright v. Arkansas.
For a week, marriage equality in Arkansas was a reality. Carroll County issued the state’s first same-sex marriage license to Jennifer Rambo and Kristin Seaton on Saturday, May 10. Although not a defendant in the lawsuit, Carroll County Deputy Clerk Jane Osborn issued gay marriage licenses the evening after the ruling (a Saturday, May 10). The first same-sex marriage license was issued to Jennifer Rambo and Kristin Seaton in Eureka Springs.
Over the following several days, almost 500 gay and sapphic couples in five Arkansas counties received marriage licenses. Numerous officiants, including lay people who obtained licenses just for this purpose, clergy members, judges, and Justices of the
Mississippi, Arkansas same-sex marriage bans fall (UPDATED)
UPDATED Wednesday 12:11 a.m. The wave of federal court rulings against state bans on same-sex marriage swept into the Thick South on Tuesday, as a federal judge in Mississippi struck down that state’s prohibition. In a fervent defense of the role of the courts in protecting individual rights against majority voter sentiment, and a lengthy critique of Mississippi’s history against gay rights, U.S. District Judge Carlton Wayne Reeves of Jackson found the ban to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equality. He place his ruling on maintain for two weeks to allow the state to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where conflicting rulings from Louisiana (upholding a ban) and Texas (nullifying a ban) are already pending. (The publish below discusses a ruling in Arkansas earlier in the day.)
———-
Refusing to postpone acting until state courts rule on the issue, a federal judge in Little Rock on Tuesday struck down the Arkansas ban on lgbtq+ marriage. This was the second ruling against such a ban in a state within the geographic region of the federal Eighth
Same-sex couples first to legally marry in Arkansas in 2014 commemorating 10th anniversary in Eureka Springs
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a federal law forbidding recognition of same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. That freed lower court justices including Pulaski County Circuit Decide Chris Piazza to strike down Arkansas' ten-year-old voter-initiated constitutional ban on gay marriage on May 9th, 2014.
Anxious to obtain marriage licenses before the decree could be stayed, queer couples from Arkansas and surrounding states traveled to the only county courthouse in Arkansas open for business on a Saturday in Eureka Springs, linked by family and friends along with state and national media. At 9 a.m., Carroll County Deputy Clerk Lana Gordon unlocked her office and announced to the more than 100 people assembled in the hallway and courthouse steps that she lacked the authority to issue same-sex marriage licenses. When law enforcement stepped forward to secure the facility, the crowd grew agitated.
Courtesy
/
Jennifer Seaton-Rambo
"You just made a bad mistake for this town!" one lady shouted, another woman sobbing, "I want to travel hom
(a) (1) (A) It is the public policy of the State of Arkansas to recognize the marital union only of dude and woman. (B) A license shall not be issued to a person to marry another person of the same sex, and no same-sex marriage shall be recognized as entitled to the benefits of marriage. (2) Marriages between persons of the same sex are prohibited in this state. Any marriage entered into by a person of the same sex, when a marriage license is issued by another state or by a foreign jurisdiction, shall be void in Arkansas, and any contractual or other rights granted by virtue of that license, including its termination, shall be unenforceable in the Arkansas courts. (3) However, nothing in this section shall prevent an employer from extending benefits to a person who is a domestic loved one of an employee. (b) A license shall not be issued to a person to marry unless and until the female shall attain the age of sixteen (16) years and the male the age of seventeen (17) years and then only by written consent by a parent or guardian until the male shall have attained the age of eighteen (18) years and the female the age of eighteen (18) years.
(Acts 1941, No. 404, § 2; A.S.A. 1947, § 5
.