Marriage licenses issued in Kentucky to same-sex couples

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“The marriage bans have been repealed and now all committed couples can speak those two simple words: ‘I do,'” Gray said. “Tonight is a celebration of marriage. Yes, of equality and of fairness. It is a celebration of our time,” he said.

Same-sex couples in some parts of Kentucky will have to wait until next week before obtaining marriage licenses, even though the Department of Libraries and Archives sent a gender neutral form to county clerks.

Warren County Clerk Lynette Yates said she relies on a computer program to generate and print those forms. Yates said it would be Tuesday at the latest before the company could update the forms.

Kentucky had amended its state constitution in 2004 to prohibit same-sex marriage. An overwhelming margin among Kentucky voters ratified the change.

The Supreme Court ruling nullifying that constitutional provision prompted sharp reaction from some Kentucky political leaders.

State Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, said he had never been more disappointed with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling or its rationale. “The court has ruled,” he said. “Do we have to live by it? Yes. Do we have to like it? No.”

Matt Bevin, the Republican nominee for governor, said “activist judges” are ignoring the will of the people and the constitutional principle of states’ rights. He called the ruling “regrettable” and criticized his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, for not pursuing the state’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

Conway said the ruling makes it clear “the government cannot pick and choose when it comes to issuing marriage licenses and the benefits they confer.” He said he did his duty as attorney general in defending Kentucky’s constitutional amendment against gay marriage, but declined to participate in the appeal because he agreed with a lower court ruling that the amendment was unconstitutional.

Conway said it’s time for Kentucky to move forward “because the good-paying jobs are going to states that are inclusive.”

The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, denounced the Supreme Court decision as “a central assault upon marriage as the conjugal union of a man and a woman” and a threat to religious liberty.