LEDYARD -- Longtime town clerk Rose Marie Belforti handles building permits, hunting licenses and government records for people in this farm-heavy Finger Lakes community.
Marriage licenses are a different story, because of her faith.
Shortly after New York became the sixth and largest state to sanction gay marriage this summer, Belforti told town board members her Christian beliefs preclude her from issuing licenses to same-sex couples. Her solution, to have her office issue all marriage licenses by appointment so a deputy can handle them, has irked some people. And one, Ed Easter, is challenging her as a write-in candidate, saying "what she is doing is wrong."
Improbably, gay marriage and religion loom as issues in the Nov. 8 race for a part-time, $12,000-a-year clerk's job in this town of gently sloping hills on Cayuga Lake.
"I want to do what the Bible tells me to do," Belforti said, sitting in her small town hall office on a recent day. Belforti, 57, is a grandmother who makes artisanal cheese with her husband at their nearby farm. Since her election as a Republican in 2001, she has staffed the town hall every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning.
She set up a system where a deputy, paid by the hour, would issue marriage licenses by appointment to all couples. She thought she found a solution that respected her religious views and maintained equal access to straight and gay couples.
The arrangement was quickly tested by a lesbian couple.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Read more...