The guy who started it all in New Mexico, County Clerk Lynn Ellins
Since county clerks in New Mexico took it upon themselves to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Aug. 2013, about 55 percent of all licenses issued in Santa Fe have been issued to gay and lesbian couples.
According to Human Rights Campaign, 1,388 of 2,524 licenses issued have been issued to same-sex couples. More than 400 of those were issued to Texas couples.
Marriage equality began in New Mexico when Dona Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins in Las Cruces, N.M., issued 40 licenses to same-sex couples on Aug. 21, 2013.
“I took an oath to uphold the Constitution,” Ellins told Dallas Voice at the time.
To him, that meant issuing licenses to couples who wanted one, because the Constitution didn’t say he couldn’t. New Mexico had never passed an anti-marriage amendment and its marriage law had never specified gender.
While the 55 percent statistic is interesting, other marriage-equality states don’t have a breakdown of number of same-sex marriages. New York simply issues marriage licenses — not same-sex marriage licenses and opposite-sex licenses — and expects any company doing business in the state to honor any marriage license it issues, so the state doesn’t keep records of how many gays and lesbian couples have married in the state.
But the Santa Fe statistic is important because same-sex marriage has become a huge industry in the New Mexico state capital.
Or maybe we really are destroying heterosexual marriage. After all, if you’re a straight guy, why would you marry girl when you could marry a hot guy?
