When Friday began, there were 14 states where same-sex couples still could not legally marry. By the afternoon — after a confusing day of orders and counter-orders by governors, attorneys general and county clerks — couples had married in all but one.
The one holdout was Louisiana. There, Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell, a Republican, condemned the ruling as “federal government intrusion into what should be a state issue.”
What’s more, Caldwell said, he had read the text of the decision. And he’d found no specific line saying that Louisiana had to obey it.
Across the country, some conservatives called for “resistance” to the high court’s ruling, which they believed trampled on the Bible and state’s rights.
In most places, that didn’t happen. But in several states, officials did try to block implementation.
In addition to Louisiana, there was Mississippi, where the state blocked almost all same-sex marriages, saying it needed a lower court’s permission to proceed.
In Alabama, two local officials announced another method of resistance: If they couldn’t stop same-sex marriage, they would stop marriage itself.
The two officials said they would no longer issue marriage licenses to anyone, gay or straight, ever again. Both officials said state law didn’t actually require their county to issue marriage licenses at all. If people wanted to get married, they could go to the next county over.
And then there was Texas, where confusion reigned.
Before the ruling, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, had warned county clerks not to issue same-sex marriage licenses until he could give them orders. The decision came, but Paxton gave no orders.
That left county officials on their own. A few urban, liberal counties issued licenses, but most waited.
In the remaining states that had not permitted same-sex marriage, state officials said they would carry out the court’s ruling.
