Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen is drawing criticism from a couple of county commissioners for his decision to reopen his office Friday evening to process marriage licenses for same-sex couples following a federal judge’s ruling on gay marriage in North Carolina:

“I don’t know where he gets the authority to reopen a county building and a county office after regular business hours, or what the extra cost was to the taxpayers of Guilford County,” said Guilford County Commissioner Alan Branson in an interview Sunday. “I think the whole thing was in poor taste. I doubt he would have reopened his office for a heterosexual couple who wanted to be married after regular business hours. I don’t see why this exception needed to be made.
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“If they’ve waited this long, they could wait until Monday morning.”

Commissioner Hank Henning also weighed in, saying that since the county serves all citizens it needs to “have standard office hours for everybody.”

Thigpen is an elected official, so it’s not clear whether or not he needed the approval of county commissioners to re-open his office after hours.

Anybody who’s followed Thigpen’s political career — he was a county commissioner before he was elected register of deeds –knows he’s a strong liberal and gay marriage advocate. But when defending his decision to reopen Thigpen said “(i)f this was a judicial opinion that I didn’t agree with and my office had to reopen to address it, I would have done it to respond to the needs of citizens, no matter who they are.”