Tennessee banned Internet-controlled ministers suspended by judge: NPR

When Andrea and Leslie Isham got married last December, they had a pretty unique wedding.

"We went to the bar, we paid the cover fees," says Leslie Isham. "We went through the doors and we sat down and just waited for the show."

The "show" was a drag show, the backdrop of the couple's wedding in a gay nightclub in Clarksville, Tenn., Alongside friends, drag-queens, bartenders and strangers to the views Similar.

"We did not have to worry about protesters coming up or people saying," We do not want that here, "said Andrea Isham.

The friend who officiated their marriage also played the matchmaker when the Ishams met for the first time. The couple said that they considered her the ideal person to celebrate their wishes.

This friend has also been ordered online.

In Tennessee, a new law that was supposed to come into force on July 1 aimed to ban the use of an Internet Minister to certify a marriage – a decision that critics say targeted LGBTQ people.

Barely two days later, a federal judge paused the court ruling, saying that ordained ministers online could continue to celebrate legal marriages, at least temporarily. This is after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of four orderly ministers from Tennessee who said the law was unconstitutional.

Lawmakers and other advocates of the ban have declared that marriages celebrated by ordained ministers on the Internet take place anyway through a legal loophole. "At the present time, it is not clear, in the eyes of the law, whether or not there are legal marriages," said Republican Representative Michael Curcio at the debate on the measure in the Legislative Assembly of the State.

The new law confirms that marriages celebrated before 1 July 2019 by Internet ministers will always be recognized.

Meanwhile, American Marriage Ministries, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization created for the sole purpose of ordering people online, responded by going to Tennessee to make seven in-person ordinations across the country. 39; state.

"Even if you are, for example, an ordinary evangelical Christian with a minister, do you want your minister to organize weddings for people who do not share his values ​​or beliefs?" said Lewis King, executive director of the organization. "It does not make sense to anyone."

At an event in Clarksville last month, the American Marriage Ministries facilitated more than 100 in-person ordinations to stay ahead of the impending law.

"Many laws in Tennessee actually limit our rights and our ability to function as citizens," said Kesley Page, a transgender man from the small town of Bumpus Mills, northwest of Nashville. "For me, I saw this as just another."

Page has attended one of the recent in-person ordinations to provide services to transgender and non-binary people who wish to get married.