Vance Day, a circuit court judge in Oregon, is already facing multiple ethics complaints for refusing to perform marriages for same-sex couples. And now he's having to defend a picture of Adolph Hitler he had hung in the courthouse.
Day, the former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party, instructed his staff to refer same-sex couples seeking a marriage to other judges who were willing to perform those ceremonies. Spokesman Patrick Korten said Day's decision was based on his "deeply-held religious beliefs."
"It's an exercise of his religious freedom rights under the First Amendment," Korten said to Portland NBC affiliate KGW News.
Korten dismissed the complaints about the picture of Hitler as baseless. He says the photo was displayed as part of an exhibit to honor World War II veterans.
"We went to war against Hitler," Korten told Reuters. "His picture was there. It was not admiringly. It was him as the epitome of the enemy that we went to fight against." In addition to orchestrating the murder of six million Jews, Hitler led the mass slaughter of thousands of gay men in Nazi Germany.
Day hasn't performed any marriages for same-sex couples and stopped performing all marriage ceremonies earlier this year. Judges in Marion County are not required to perform marriage ceremonies, but Day's original decision to only exclude gay and lesbian couples led to the ethics complaint.
