Refusing to Perform Marriage Ceremonies

"It's kind of oxymoronic for me to perform ceremonies that can't be performed for me, so I'm not going to do it," Parker tells the Dallas Voice.

Texas Judge Tonya Parker is the first LGBT person elected as a judge in Dallas County. According to the Dallas Voice, Parker is also believed to be the first openly LGBT African-American elected official in the state's history.

In an email, Parker wrote that performing marriage ceremonies is not her duty as a judge, but rather "a right and privilege." One she chooses not to exercise.

When she turns a straight couple away, she uses it as an opportunity to teach a lesson about marriage equality, Parker told a group at a Stonewall Democrats of Dallas meeting on Tuesday.

"I don't perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality and until it does, I'm not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn't apply to another group of people," said Parker in a video of the meeting on Tuesday.

She refuses to perform marriage ceremonies until she, and every other gay person in Texas, have the same right to marry as straight couples do.

Parker describes cases in which she was able to stop discrimination in the court.

Once she heard a case that involved a man who allegedly molested a young boy and a participant used the words "child molestor" and "homosexual" interchangeably.

Parker said, "when a man molests a little girl, people don't call him heterosexual. So when this man molests this little boy, assuming [the] allegations to be true, you are not going to stand in my courtroom and call him a homosexual."

These are small ways of getting her point across, but she thinks it important to do these things that others in the LGBT community may not be able to do without her position of power.