Colusa: Ready and willing, but no takers
In this farm town about 70 miles north of Sacramento, Colusa County Clerk Kathleen Moran carefully prepared herself and her staff for the arrival of same-sex marriage. When the doors of her office swung open at 8:30 a.m., she waited. And waited. "We're ready for it," Moran said, expectant even as the morning ticked away uneventfully. Not a protester was to be seen, nor a same-sex couple to be wed. In the weeks leading up to Day 1, Moran and her staff rewrote the short but heartfelt script they read for marriage ceremonies, replacing gender-specific terms like "husband" and "bride" with the word "spouse." She also had a 45-minute "heart-to-heart" last week with her clerks. Would anyone, she asked, be troubled carrying out the magisterial duties involved with a same-sex marriage? They told her not to worry, Moran said: "They felt it was just part of the job." Along with clerks in counties all over the state, Moran said she has received calls from same-sex marriage foes warning her against overseeing the ceremonies. Moran would tell the callers -- all, she said, from out of town -- that her role isn't to make the laws but to carry them out. "I explained that we're really not the level for anyone to be protesting at,'' she said, sitting inside the county's Greek-revival courthouse before bound volumes of records dating from Colusa's establishment in 1850. A gazebo on the courthouse lawn serves as the principal matrimonial site. Last year, Moran and her deputy clerks issued 111 marriage licenses and presided over 50 civil ceremonies. Colusa County, like most in the state's agricultural heartland, is conservative, and voted against gay marriage in 2000. But it's also a live-and-let-live kind of place, said Moran, county clerk for the past two decades. Outwardly gay couples aren't a visible part of life in Colusa, Moran said, but she expects at least a few to appear at her front counter seeking a marriage certificate. "This is a place where you better coexist," she said. "Eventually you're going to run into just about everyone at the grocery store." ---Eric Bailey
