Should Duval Clerk of the Court Ronnie Fussell resign?

Almost a week has passed since marriage equality became law in Duval County, and we are still waiting for Ronnie Fussell, the beleaguered Clerk of Courts, to resume having courthouse weddings in the Duval County courthouse. The decades-long tradition came to a halt after Fussell and his lieutenants decided to disobey the rule of law, because they didn’t feel comfortable performing same-sex weddings.

In stopping courthouse weddings, they are practicing discrimination in a couple of different ways. It is abundantly clear – as in, it has been reported throughout the nation – that this practice would not have been stopped were gay marriage not law. There was a room in the courthouse dedicated expressly to courthouse weddings. Now? Fussell is trying to work out a face-saving solution, in which members of the Jacksonville Bar Association perform the weddings on a pro bono basis, with the private sector being forced to step up and provide a remedy for what is clearly and explicitly meant to be a denial of equal accomodations.

Beyond the discrimination against same-sex marriages, this also punishes poor people across the board. Our wedding industry is predicated on sentimentality and markups, and cost-conscious soon-to-be newlyweds have long cherished the recourse of a courthouse wedding as a way of saving money on ceremony and devoting it to things like paying rent and light bills. In the short term, people will step up and perform these ceremonies pro bono. But what of the long term?

Who knows? Fussell and his court took what they thought to be a principled position, but it’s been almost a week and no one was risen up to speak in the defense of the decision. There have been no hosannas in the local media; indeed, the Jacksonville Business Journal and the Florida Times-Union – two organs of the establishment in every meaningful sense – have come out against the decision.

It had been weeks – weeks! – since a social conservative in Jacksonville got out in front of the parade by serving up red meat to the yokels for political advantage that didn’t quite manifest. Council President Clay Yarborough, recall, got national publicity for attempting to shut down a display of a photograph of a naked pregnant woman at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It only took the mayor’s office a few days to formally repudiate this move. But it doesn’t look like any such reaction will come from the Mayor this time, who seems to believe, without any evidence save that of three month old polls, that socially conservative Republicans will rally to his side once his team manages to begin a counterattack against the Lenny Curry campaign.

So without the Democratic mayor coming to the defense of an important group in the coalition that brought him to power, it looks like citizens are going to attempt to force city government’s hand when it comes to abiding by both the letter and the spirit of decided law. There are murmurs that a recall drive is imminent. And at the mass same-sex wedding in Hemming Plaza on Saturday, a clarion call was issued by speakers to consider these issues when voting for candidates for city office.

Ronnie Fussell is on the wrong side. Of history, of public consensus, and even of political expedience. He is left with an unenviable choice. To take charge of his staff and compel them to find room in their hearts to extend the long-standing prerogative of courthouse weddings equitably and in a non-discriminatory manner. Or to resign, because he clearly intends to pick and choose the laws by which his courthouse will abide, a direct violation of the rule of waw that is a bedrock of our Republic.

How much money will his office spend fighting established law and cultural inevitability? We saw Pam Bondi fight it for months and months – it did her no good, did the state no good. Ronnie Fussell is a smart man and must see that he overstepped his boundaries and his mandate from the voters, gay and straight alike, in Jacksonville. He must take corrective action, thus forging a path toward reconciliation and civic unity.

Some have compared this episode to when Jacksonville, in response to the forced integration of public pools, simply shut down and disassembled them. Fussell has sacrificed a worthy career as a political lifer on the altar of an issue that no longer has traction or real meaning to those he is attempting to pander to.