Missouri County Votes to Lower Flag to Mourn Marriage Equality

UPDATE: Commissioners say they will rescind their decision. Read the latest here.

A county in Missouri will be flying the American flag at half-staff the 26th day of each month until next June in mourning over the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision.

The three-member Dent County Commission voted unanimously Monday to lower the flag over the county courthouse and judicial building in protest of the June 26 ruling, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Dent County is located in southern Missouri and has a population of about 15,000.

"It ain't what our Bible tells us. It's against God's plan," County Commissioner Gary Larson said of same-sex marriage, according to the Post-Dispatch. He and Commissioner Dennis Purcell both agreed to the plan for lowering the flag, proposed by Presiding Commissioner Darrell Skiles.

Skiles even filed a letter into the public record denouncing what he called "the U.S. high court's stamp of approval of what God speaks of as an abomination" and a "despicable Supreme Court travesty." The letter was obtained by a reporter for The Salem News, a Dent County paper that first reported on the vote, the Post-Dispatch notes.

The action has inspired a Change.org petition by Dent County resident Alex Sellers, who told the St. Louis paper he doesn't want anyone to think all people in the county share the commissioners' views.

"Even if this doesn't change their minds, I wanted it out there that we're not all a bunch of closed-minded individuals mourning the Supreme Court decision," Sellers said. "This is not just a backward place. There's another side of this."

He added that when he saw the initial report of the vote, he thought it must be a satirical story from The Onion or a similar humor site.

PROMO, a Missouri LGBT advocacy group, contends the commissioners' action is illegal, as only presidents and governors can order the flag to be flown at half-staff, St. Louis's Boom Magazine reports.

Meanwhile, despite the flag vote, Dent County has not resisted the Supreme Court ruling in other ways; it is issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Recorder of Deeds Cindy Ard told the Post-Dispatch. Just one such couple has applied to date, she said.