"Which one of you is going to be the husband?" the assistant Hood County clerk asked the two men standing before her last Thursday afternoon.

"Both of us," said one of the men.

"You can't both be the husband," the assistant clerk said, confused or disdainful, depending on varying accounts. The men had shown the clerk their IDs, social security numbers, dates and places of birth, and were waiting to give her their $83.00 for their marriage license, and now the husband conundrum. Never mind that the new forms issued from Austin didn't include the words "husband" or "wife," nor were they gender-specific in any way. The men, a couple of ranchers from down the road, had waited 27 years for this day, and the government of Hood County, Texas, was determined to make them keep waiting.

Today's constitutional crisis takes us to the Hood County clerk, Katie Lang, whose office as of this morning seemed to be holding out for a higher civil authority than the United States Supreme Court, and for her troubles she got herself sued in federal court in the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth, in papers filed before dawn today. The suit was filed on behalf of two lifelong Texans, Jim Cato and Joe Stapleton, who had been hoping to obtain a marriage license without force or drama, only to have clerk Lang instruct her staff shortly after the Obergefell decision on June 26, "We are not issuing them because I am instilling my religious liberty in this office."

I spoke at length to Cato and Stapleton yesterday afternoon, along with their attorneys, Jan Soifer and Austin Kaplan, about the saga of Jim and Joe, the historic fight that was brewing in Hood County, and the lawsuit that will at last bring the rebel counties of Texas into compliance with the U.S. Constitution.

Cato and Stapleton have been together for 27 years and live on a ranch in Granbury, population 7,978, the Hood County seat. Last Thursday afternoon, at about 3:45, they put on their cowboy hats and made their way to the courthouse. In the past week it has been common for recalcitrant county clerks in Texas to claim that they simply didn't yet have the proper paperwork for a same-sex marriage license, even the though the Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics had in fact updated the marriage license form the very afternoon that the Supreme Court made its landmark ruling. The Hood County clerk's office has been a roiling mess of shifting excuses since then, none based in law or reality—first, Lang's "religious liberty" declaration, followed two days later by an announcement that her office would indeed follow the law and issue licenses, once she received new forms (Lang herself wouldn't issue licenses based on her moral objections, but, in the words of Austin activist Glen Maxey, "she would find a heathen in her office who would"), to telling Cato and Stapleton on Thursday afternoon that there would be an indefinite delay in their ability to get a license in Hood County. After the couple produced the updated form that they had brought with them, they were told again that they would not be getting a license that day in Hood County. They were then ordered to leave the premises by Lang, who, according to Cato, said she felt threatened by all this marriage business, and by the local media that had come along to watch. To make sure she was safe, she called in a phalanx of sheriff's deputies to keep Cato and Stapleton out of the public building.

Supporters of Hood County clerk Katie Lang gather at the courthouse in Granbury, Texas, on Thursday, July 2, 2015, amid dueling same-sex marriage rallies. Getty Images

Moments later, attorneys Soifer and Kaplan showed up from Austin, demanding to see Lang, and compelling the clerk to allow their clients, who pay her salary, into the office. An assistant clerk told Soifer that Lang—who could be seen around the corner in her office, talking on her cell phone—was busy. She came out of her office and handed her cell phone to Soifer, saying, "Speak to my lawyer." The person on the phone identified herself as Chelsey Youman, a lawyer with the Liberty Institute, the "largest legal organization dedicated solely to defending and restoring religious liberty in America," located up the road in Plano. Youman told Soifer that Lang's office would not be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples for at least three weeks, incorrectly repeating that Hood County did not have the correct forms. Soifer handed the phone back to Lang and asked the clerk to produce the nettlesome form, which she found to be "just fine, and not gender-specific at all. There is no mention of 'husband' or 'wife' or 'bride' and 'groom' or 'male' and 'female' or 'man' or 'woman,'" says Soifer. "All it had was 'Mr. _____ and M ______.' And I said, 'So where's the problem?' You could put an "r" in the second blank, put both of their names in, and we're good. And the clerk said, 'Oh, no, no, no. You can't do that. That would be altering a state form, and that is a violation of state law.'

"I was so puzzled by that remark, and told her, 'It's called filling out the state form, not altering it.'"

Soifer's colleague, Austin Kaplan, adds: "It was a clear pretext to deny our clients their constitutional right to get a marriage license in that county."

Lang then told Soifer that if she and Kaplan were not already married, she would sell them a marriage license on the spot. Which gets us to federal court, Northern District of Texas, and to this morning's lawsuit.

Since the beginning of time (which may or may not have been that long ago, depending on which textbook you read down in Texas), politicians have been making their bones by taking stands against the federal government. Many of these stands have been in the name of "states' rights." Some of them have even been sincere. Invariably, they have been mistaken and misguided. Nonetheless, there is never a political downside for a right-wing politician to provoke the federal system into cracking down, providing all sorts of free publicity in the process. It may have just been a coincidence that ClerkLang's[link href='http://www.eastlandcountytoday.com/breaking-news-mike-lang-announces-run-state-representative-district-60' link_updater_label='external' target='_blank']husband Mike is running for state representative. And Mike Lang won't be the first legislative candidate from the South to run against the United States Supreme Court. I am equally sure that Katie Lang has a future in Republican politics in Texas. Anyone looking to solve the riddle of the Hood County clerk's office need look no further than that.

"They're discriminating against us to further their own political ambitions," Jim Cato says.

"The bottom line is this," says Austin Kaplan: "Since she refuses to issue our client their marriage license, we are going to ask a higher power—and by that I don't mean a religious power, I mean a federal judge—to tell her that the constitution requires her to give our clients their marriage license, and to issue licenses to same-sex couples in her county. This is a county clerk in Texas, whose ministerial duties—and by that I don't mean like a church minister, I mean in terms of a mindless, robotic, required task—is to issue marriage licenses. This is a task that is part of her job. And so the fact that she was on the phone not with her county attorney, but with an attorney who has nothing to do with this county, a private attorney who is telling her to take actions that are going to bind that county, and that are going to cost that county taxpayers' money—let that sink in the with the taxpayers of Hood County."

As for Jim Cato and Joe Stapleton, they feel as if they have waited long enough, and don't want to wait anymore. They have both recently retired from professional careers, and the ranch in Granbury is where they will spend their retirement. "This is our home," Joe says. "We both have family in Fort Worth, and everything's been going well, everything's been rocking and rolling—we've got horses, alpacas, goats, ducks, chickens, and it's been quite a great place until…we encountered the county clerk."

Cato, a Vietnam-era Air Force veteran who is originally from Brenham, in the gently rolling hills between Houston and Austin, says that they picked Granbury because, "I have a daughter and two granddaughters in Fort Worth and Joe has elderly parents there, so we were coming up to be close to our family…my daughter drove from Fort Worth on Thursday to be with us. She surprised me. I didn't know she was coming. She has been extremely supportive and wonderful. My granddaughters have been posting on Facebook about how proud they are of me. They're 13 and 9. They don't even understand why we couldn't get married in the first place."

Apparently, the civil authorities in Hood County, perhaps encouraged by this morning's lawsuit, have come to agree with Cato's grandkids. Late this morning, Soifer and Kaplan issued this statement on behalf of Cato and Stapleton:

"The license was issued this morning, a few hours after the lawsuit was filed, in handwriting on the existing license form, which proves that County Clerk Lang easily could have complied with the law without waiting ten days. Under these circumstances, the lawsuit will not be dismissed until and unless we have an agreement from Clerk Lang that her office will issue marriage licenses to all couples, gay and straight, without delay..."

But the rebellion continues.

Next up: Irion County, Texas, population 1,612, where just a little while ago the county clerk, Molly Criner, while conceding that she is not a lawyer or constitutional scholar, released a statement that reads in part:

"As a country, it's inherent in our very DNA to stand against unlawful seizures of power that violate our God given rights and liberty. The Obergefell decision looks like just such a seizure. It went beyond the judge's confined duty of interpreting the written Constitution and established precedents and instead redefined marriage in the way they would like it to be. Natural marriage can be recognized by government, but it cannot be redefined without stepping out of the bounds of nature and nature's God, who was recognized at the founding of our nation as the very source of our liberties.

I have great respect for my fellow clerks. I know that you have all taken this matter seriously. Not a few of you have, happily or unhappily, come to the conclusion that to keep your oath, you must uphold the Supreme Court ruling.

I have come to the opposite conclusion: to keep my oath to uphold the Constitution, I must reject this ruling that I believe is lawless. It's a scary thing to do, but I believe strongly that I have to stand for the Constitution and the rule of law. I hold no animosity toward any clerk with a different view. Nor do I hold any animosity toward any couple who sought this ruling for their personal lives.

Still, I must do what I believe is right. I hope that you county clerks who believe as I do will stand alongside me..."

Read the Hood County lawsuit below:

This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io