Sen. Perry: Molly Criner is Headed for Jail

Irion County Clerk Molly Criner may end up in jail for refusing to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. That’s what State Senator Charles Perry predicts, but he doesn’t want it to happen. He’s on Criner’s side.

“I asked her, 'are you ready to go to jail over this?' And she said, yes, she was,” Perry said at the monthly luncheon with the Concho Valley Republican Women yesterday, Oct. 22.

Criner is the sole remaining county clerk in Texas who refuses to issue a same-sex marriage license. Eventually, a leftist activist group is going to test it, Perry said. And when they do, he said that Irion County could spend as much as $500,000 defending its county clerk.

Molly Criner’s Crusade

Criner gave a speech at the Oct. 8 “Pastors and Patriots” event in San Angelo where she explained that she believes her stand is for all Texans and their Constitutional rights. Criner’s stated central reason for her act of civil disobedience is that she took two oaths of office. One is to protect and defend the federal Constitution. The other was to protect and defend the Texas Constitution. After the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision mandating that same-sex marriages are legal on all 50 states, Criner argues, federal law no longer is congruent with the Texas Constitution.  The Texas Constitution can only be amended by a vote by the people, and Section 32 of the Texas Constitution states “Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” The wording defining marriage in Texas was added on Nov. 8, 2005.

“If I do this (sign same-sex marriage licenses), I’m breaking my oath,” she said.

Having someone in her office, or hiring a part-time same-sex marriage license issuer wasn’t an option for Criner either. “They are operating under my authority,” she said. Besides that, Criner claims her two assistant clerks in her small office are morally opposed to issuing same-sex marriage licenses too.

Criner said that when the Obergefell decision was handed down, the first reaction of many county clerks across the state was to stall. For example, like almost every Texas county clerk, Tom Green County Clerk Liz McGill wouldn’t issue a same-sex marriage license until the state supplied forms that removed the wording referring to a “man” and a “woman”.  Updated forms arrived within a week.

While waiting for the forms to arrive, Criner said she studied the Obergefell decision. “The more I read, the more something started to stir,” she said. “Everywhere else, everyone was hoping that something would break. It never did.”

Criner, a married mother of two teenagers, said that it was her husband who prodded her to make a decision to either resign or stand and fight. She considered her options.

She decided against resigning because she felt that her single year in office wasn’t enough to satisfy the expectations of the voters and her supporters. Also, she said, she felt that the Irion County Clerk’s office was finally running smoothly and a disruption would disappoint the county’s citizens. Then she considered the alternative, to stand and fight.

She knew a friend in Denver who stood up to leftist activists and called him for advice. “He said it will be awful,” Criner said. “’Don’t do it! They’ll come and camp out in your front yard,’” she said he warned her. “It just got scarier and scarier… We have two teenagers at home…”

Despite the ominous warnings, Criner took a stand: Her office would not issue a same-sex marriage license. And it hasn’t.

 “Once the word got out that we were making a stand in Irion County, people showed up to support us,” she said.

Criner stated that she believes she is not just standing up for her own religious liberty, but also for the every citizen of Texas, just about. “What about the 76 percent of Texans who [also] oppose this?” Criner asked, referring to the plurality of support for the 2005 Texas Constitutional amendment that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman only.

Perry said that the statutes aren’t aligned to allow the state to help Irion County much this time. “No matter what statute you pass, there’s going to be persecution,“ he said. But, Perry is working with Lt. Governor Dan Patrick to lay the groundwork to pass better legislation in 2017 to support future Criners.

Next Battle: Gender Identity in Texas Schools

The effort is to prepare the legal battlefield for a similar fight Perry predicts will overtake Texas within the next five years: Gender identity in Texas school districts.

Perry said that the leftist push to provide accommodations for transgender and transsexual school children is on the horizon. Pasadena Republican Rep. Gilbert Pena attempted to introduce a bill last session what was called a “bathroom bill”. It mandated that Texas school districts enact codes of conduct that ensure that only students of the same “biological sex” use the same bathrooms, showers and locker-room facilities. The bill never made it to the floor.

Perry’s general strategy to combat gender identity in Texas schools is to enact statutes around it, making it more difficult for courts to rule in favor of allowing transgender-declared students to choose which bathroom to use.

The tool the Left will use is money, Perry said.

“We can pass a law that says if the school board is sued over these issues, the Texas Attorney General can defend them.  You can tie the school districts to the state and federal interaction that will allow the state’s AG office to handle it,” he said.

Maybe Molly Criner’s fight, and a recent contentious town hall meeting with Perry and State Rep. Drew Darby in Mertzon, the Irion County seat, has encouraged Perry to redouble his efforts to protect religious liberty. After a July 2015 press release and a declaration promising to protect the religious liberty of Texas’ county clerks, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton relented and said that Obergefell and religious liberty can co-exist and that his office cannot defend county clerks who run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling (clerks refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses “may well face litigation and/or a fine,” he wrote). Paxton in effect said that Molly Criner and Irion County are on their own. And right now, so are Texas school districts.

“Today, if a school board gets sued, the state of Texas can’t defend them,” Perry said. “So we’ve got to have statute to make that connection.”

“Here’s the deal. It’s about the money and most school districts don’t have the resources to be involved in these lawsuits. We’ve got to get smarter about how we go about attacking this issue,” Perry said. “My prediction is that Texas will lead the nation on metrics and measures to push back on the federal courts and assert our state’s rights.”

County Judge Steve Floyd added that the county has at least 30 facilities, or buildings, and it’s in the planning stages of building a new jail. “To have to pay for every variation of what someone claims to be is going to get expensive. So it’s not just fighting lawsuits. It’s fighting the practical application of all of this and its impact on the county’s budget,” Floyd said.

For Perry and the rest of the Republican leadership around the state, Molly Criner’s crusade may well be the canary in the mine warning of the state’s upcoming arduous fight over the tension between sex, religious liberty, and money.

Notes:

Chelsea Reinhard and Amanda Henson on The Last Stand Against Gay Marriage in Irion County.

Sen. Perry sent letter to supporters of Molly Criner outlining efforts underway to create statutes in Texas Law to protect religious freedom. View it here.

See Molly Criner speak in the video below, by the Christian Reporter News: