Rose Marie Belforti, the town clerk for
Ledyard, New York may be forced to resign if she continues to refuse
to sign marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples.
Earlier this month, citing her
Christian faith, Belforti decided not to issue marriage licenses at
all, either to gay or straight couples.
According to ABC affiliate WSYR, a
lawyer representing a gay couple who allege they were denied the
right to get married has threatened to sue the town board if Belforti
keeps her job and refuses to give licenses.
In an interview with the Christian
conservative site CitizenLink, Belforti suggested she objected to gay
marriage because it could lead to bestiality.
“I don't personally have any problem
with gay people. I have friends who are gay. This is more a policy
issue for me. The new marriage application form says,
'Bride/Groom/Spouse' on both sides. You can tell what your sex is,
but it's optional,” Belforti
said.
“I see a lot of problems with this
form. For instance, I don't know if, when we consider historically
that people are going to go back and look at their genealogy and try
to find out who their relatives are, when they come upon this form
and they see father or parent, mother or parent, they're never going
to know if that's their real mother and father or if it's just a
neighbor who was raising them or an uncle or an aunt or anybody …
because a parent really can be anyone. We have these names on here
and no on will ever know if it's a woman or a man, if it's same-sex
or not.”
“I'm worried there's another agenda
involved here other than just allowing same-sex couples to be
married. We know what a bride is, we know what a groom is – but if
we choose to be a 'spouse,' does that even limit [marriage] to a
human being? Do you know what I'm saying?”