A crowd waves rainbow flags during the Heritage Pride March in New York June 28. Large turnouts were expected for gay pride parades across the US following the landmark US Supreme Court ruling that said gay couples can marry anywhere in the country. AP Photo/Kathy Willens Kim Davis took a stand against the US Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and now she's in jail.

Now a judge is taking a stand against the ruling by refusing to issue divorce papers.

Jeffrey Atherton, a judge in Hamilton County, Tennessee, said he can't divorce Thomas and Pamela Bumgardner because, as he wrote in his ruling, "Tennesseans have been deemed by the U.S. Supreme Court to be incompetent to define and address such keystone/central institutions such as marriage, and, thereby, at minimum, contested divorces."

That is to say, because the Supreme Court allows f0r a definition of marriage that Atherton personally disagrees with, Atherton says that the entire Tennessee judicial system cannot rule on any martial situations — as well as other "central institutions" — whatsoever. That includes the Bumgardners' separation.

Later in his ruling, Atherton says the Supreme Court has an "iron fist and a limp wrist."

Other judges say Atherton was making a political statement, and that his reasoning is inconsistent with the law.

"State court judges, regardless of their personal points of view, must defer to the Supreme Court's constitutional interpretation," Penny White, a former member of the Tennessee Supreme Court and a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law, said in a statement.

Atherton, in his ruling, said he is baffled by how to treat divorce cases because of the Supreme Court's gay-marriage ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. The ruling "leaves a mere trial level Tennessee state court judge in a bit of a quandary," he wrote.

"With the U.S. Supreme Court having defined what must be recognized as a marriage, it would appear that Tennessee's judiciary must now await the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court as to what is not a marriage," Atherton wrote. "Or better stated, when a marriage is no longer a marriage."

The Bumgardners haven't yet appealed the decision.