Gay couples got married in Alabama on Monday despite a last-minute push from the state’s chief justice to stop them, NBC News reports.
The United States Supreme Court declined to block a federal court order from January requiring the state to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. In Birmingham, cheers and applause went up at the probate court as licenses were issued.
“We have large crowds generally on Valentine’s Day here,” Judge Alan King of Jefferson County Probate Court told NBC News by phone. “This is by far the largest crowd that I’ve seen. It’s a very happy occasion.”
Alabama became the 37th state to recognize gay marriage. One of the first licenses went to Dee and Laura Bush, who walked outside to a park where a minister was performing wedding ceremonies.
“I figured that we would be that last ones — I mean, they would drag Alabama kicking and screaming to equality,” Laura Bush told The Associated Press.
But there was confusion elsewhere in the state. Gay couples in nearby Shelby County who turned up to get a license were greeted by a sign saying that no marriage licenses of any kind would be issued because of conflicting orders.
On Sunday night, Chief Justice Roy Moore ordered the state’s probate judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses. “A marriage contracted between individuals of the same sex is invalid in this state,” he wrote.
Moore, in a telephone interview with NBC News, insisted on Monday that the federal courts had gone too far, and had no power to order state probate judges to do anything.
“A lot of states in this union have caved to such unlawful authority, and this is not one,” he said. “This is Alabama. We don’t give up the recognition that law has bounds.”
“Once you start redefining marriage, that’s the ultimate power,” he added. “Would it overturn the laws of incest? Bigamy? Polygamy? How far do they go?”
Moore is known for installing a Ten Commandments monument in 2001 at the state judicial building. He was removed from office in 2003 but returned by voters in 2012.
Governor Robert Bentley said in a statement that he, too, disagreed with the federal court ruling, by Judge Callie V.S. Granade in Mobile. But the governor said he would take no action against probate judges who issued licenses to gay couples.
“We will follow the rule of law in Alabama, and allow the issue of same sex marriage to be worked out through the proper legal channels,” he said.
The US Supreme Court has agreed to definitively answer, probably in late June, whether the Constitution allows states to ban same-sex marriage.
The Supreme Court ruling on Monday denied a request for a stay by the state. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay rights organization, urged probate judges to ignore the chief justice, follow the Constitution and issue the licenses.
“This is a pathetic, last-ditch attempt at judicial fiat by an Alabama Supreme Court justice — a man who should respect the rule of law rather than advance his personal beliefs,” Sarah Warbelow, the organisation’s legal director, said in a statement.
Alabama voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment