I couldn’t help but cringe a bit when news of my native county crept up in sev­eral news sto­ries about gay mar­riage in Cal­i­for­nia, for exam­ple in this Wall Street Jour­nal article:

June 17 marks the date that gay and les­bian cou­ples can marry legally in Cal­i­for­nia, fol­low­ing a land­mark ruling by the state’s Supreme Court in May that struck down the ban on same-​sex mar­riage. The day will be marked by joyous cel­e­bra­tions and eager cou­ples earn­ing a right they have waited years to obtain.

Yet, the occa­sion will also be punc­tu­ated by the divi­sion it cre­ates through­out the state. On the one hand, San Fran­cisco County has added addi­tional staff and expanded hours so the clerk’s office can accom­mo­date the surge in demand from same-​sex cou­ples seek­ing mar­riage licenses and wed­ding ceremonies….

In con­trast, the Butte County clerk-​recorder issued a June 11 news release saying her office will stop per­form­ing wed­ding cer­e­monies alto­gether–for gay and het­ero­sex­ual couples.

For Rick Perl­stein and others, actions like this last amount to noth­ing less than a twenty-first-century ver­sion of the mas­sive resis­tance cam­paigns that fol­lowed Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion. Until I looked into it, I was inclined to agree.

But it turns out that what’s going on in Butte County is much less sin­is­ter than the WSJ and others would have us believe.