Pottstown Mayor, Wills Candidate Reportedly Won't Sign Same-Sex Marriage Certificates

A candidate for register of wills in Montgomery County said that she won’t sign same-sex marriage certificates, but she also won’t stand in the way of the law, according to media reports.

Sharon Valentine-Thomas, the former Republican mayor of Pottstown and an ordained minister, is running against incumbent Democrat D. Bruce Haines, who granted same-sex marriage licenses before it was even legal in Pennsylvania, according to Philly.com.

Haines says she is not an “obstructionist,” according to reports, and that the accomodation made for Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who was initially jailed for refusing to issue licenses in September, would serve as her legal precedent.

“Everyone will not share or appreciate you or your beliefs,” she said in a Facebook post Thursday.

Haines was skeptical.

“What would happen if someone, citing religious values or conscience, opposed mixed race marriages?” Haines asked, according to The Intelligencer.

Haines believes that Davis’ refusal to issue licenses is not the same as Haines’ own civil disobedience.

“What Davis did was similar to what I did, but on the opposite moral spectrum,” he wrote. “I issued marriage licenses against PA law, and when I was asked to stop, by the court, I complied, where she did not.”

A legal comparison and analysis of the Haines and Davis cases, written by the Legal Intelligencer, comes down on Haines’ side.

Valentine-Thomas said that she hoped she would be allowed to appoint deputies who could sign the certificates instead of her, the Pottstown Mercury reported.

Image courtesy Steve Heckman.