Judge Tonya Parker, Dallas County's
first openly gay judge, has vowed to not marry straight couples until
gay couples are given the same right, gay weekly the Dallas
Voice reported.
Parker made her comments at Tuesday's
monthly meeting of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas.
Parker told attendees that she refers
couples who wish to marry to other judges.
“I use it as my opportunity to give
them a lesson about marriage inequality in this state because I feel
like I have to tell them why I'm turning them away,” Parker said.
“So I usually will offer them something along the lines of 'I'm
sorry. I don't perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state
that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not
going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn't
apply to another group of people.' And it's kind of oxymoronic for
me to perform ceremonies that can't be performed for me, so I'm not
going to do it.”
Parker added that prosecutors in her
courtroom are not allowed to use the terms “child molester” and
“homosexual” interchangeably, arguing that the term
“heterosexual” would not be used in place of “child molester”
in cases involving a heterosexual person accused of molesting a
child. (Video of Parker's speech is embedded in the right panel of
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