Chris Sevier says he’s being denied his right to marry – his computer.
The persistent Tennessee lawyer – who has carried his challenge to same-sex marriage to courthouses across the nation – has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Houston saying he and his 2011 MacBook were rejected for a marriage license in Harris County.
He is suing the Harris County District Clerk, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, saying his 14th Amendment right to marry is being denied. Sevier has filed similar challenges for the right to marry a machine in Tennessee and Utah.
Paxton’s office, however, is asking U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett to hit the delete button on the lawsuit.
His office filed court papers asking that the lawsuit be dismissed, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Obergefell decision in June allowing same-sex marriage does not extend to man and machine.
“The right to marry one’s computer is not an interest, objectively, deeply rooted in the nation’s history and tradition such that it qualifies as a protected interest,” Paxton’s brief argued.
You will, I’m sure, be shocked to learn that the plaintiff is an activist who believes that same-sex marriage has “hijacked the Constitution”, whatever that means. I had thought it would be impossible to make an argument against same-sex marriage that is stupider than the “man on dog” and box turtle claims of the recent past, but clearly I was wrong.