Locals protest same sex marriage stay

BY C.S. GILBERT

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

About 50 people braved threatening skies Tuesday morning to protest the stay preventing Clerk of Courts Amy Hevilin’s office from beginning to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. The demonstration at the Monroe County Court House, which grew from a conversation among Unitareian Universalist friends Sunday, quickly grew to include like-minded individuals and representatives of organizations such as Equality Florida and the local chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Present to speak were Aaron Huntsman and William Lee Jones, plaintiffs in the successful suit decided by Judge Luis Garcia last Thursday. However, Garcia declined on Monday to lift the stay on issuing the licenses pending an appeal by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Also addressing the crowd were the couple’s lawyers, principals from the Key Largo firm of Restivo, Reilly and Vigil-Farinas.

The statewide civil rights group Equality Florida issued the following statement: “In his ruling last week, Judge Luis Garcia confirmed that every single day same sex couples are denied marriage licenses, their constitutional rights are violated, and they suffer harms and risk of harms, for which they can never be compensated.

“Attorney General Pam Bondi continues to use every procedural maneuver possible to delay the issuing of marriage licenses in Florida despite the overwhelming evidence that allowing these couples to marry hurts no-one, and despite the fact that denying them access to marriage is a daily insult resulting in huge risks and immediate harms to their families.

“These families have waited far too long already, and we are calling on the Attorney General to stop her efforts immediately to block their marriages. “Every day these couples are barred from marriage is a day of enormous risk to their families, and it is unfair to force them to wait months or longer while the state pursues an appeal that is almost certain to fail.

“Imagine if one of the thousands of same sex couples in Florida who have been together for decades experiences the tragedy of one partner dying while waiting for the appeal to be decided. The damage could never be undone, and there is absolutely no harm in granting them those protections while awaiting the appeal.

“Were it not for the attorney general, today would have been a day of joyous celebration as same sex couples here in Florida were finally able to marry the person they love. But although this delay is both painful and harmful, make no mistake, marriage is coming to Monroe County and to Florida and to our entire nation and nothing will turn us back.”

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