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Tennessee GOP quietly overturns marriage equality by giving officials the right to refuse
(www.advocate.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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No. The County Clerk's office issues marriage licenses before the marriage is solemnized, and the officiant who solemnizes the marriage then turns the license back in, completed.
Basically you get issued the license to permit the marriage, someone accepts that paperwork and solemnizes the marriage (usually in some variety of ceremony, as befits your cultural and religious preferences), then that person (the officiant) completes the license and submits it back to the state to inform them it's been done.
The Tennessee law in question essentially says that just because someone is allowed to officiate a marriage in Tennessee doesn't mean they are required to if they have some issue with the pairing. AKA you can't force a preacher from a decidedly anti-LGBT church to marry you just because they are a preacher. Likewise for not being able to force the local Grand Wizard to solemnize your interracial marriage. Or any other reason someone might not want to officiate literally every marriage presented to them.
Does it? It's not a state employee performing their job function that's given this leeway. The County Clerk is still required to issue the marriage license and is still required to accept and process completed ones, even if they disagree with those pairings.
It's the person performing the wedding that is given leeway to decide who they are willing to marry, and the options there are broad enough that it doesn't meaningfully restrict you (there are about 102,000 notaries public as well as an assortment of current and former elected officials and literally any clergy of any faith).
https://order.spaghettimonster.org/ordination/
That might count, though FSM is often in a grey area because it's usually primarily a satire of religion rather than claiming to actually be one. The list of who can solemnize marriage in Tennessee is here:
https://www.nashville.gov/departments/county-clerk/marriage-license/who-can-solemnize
Clergy mostly fall under:
Military and law enforcement chaplains have their own items in the list, further down. Apparently they don't count as "regular" clergy?
36-3-301(a)(2): Persons receiving online ordinations may not solemnize the rite of matrimony.
They already thought of that.