Same-sex marriage spread further across Alabama on Tuesday as more courthouses issued licenses to gays and lesbians, yet many still defied a federal judge’s order, so couples took their fight back to court.
A showdown in federal court is set for Thursday in Mobile, where gay couples have waited for two days in the county courthouse after officials quit issuing marriage licenses altogether — even for heterosexual couples — rather than provide them to same-sex couples.
Jim Strawser and his partner John Humphrey sat outside the shuttered marriage license window at the courthouse Tuesday.
“Come on, you’ve got a federal court order. Open those windows,” Strawser said to no avail.
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore at the 11th hour ordered probate judges not to allow same-sex marriages, even though a federal judge had ruled the state’s ban was unconstitutional and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to issue a stay, allowing marriages to begin Monday.
Moore’s effort brought immediate comparisons to the vow by then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s 1963 vow of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” as the state prepared to square off against the federal government over civil rights.
Moore, a Republican, made a national name for himself when he disobeyed a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse in 2003. He was forced from the bench but was re-elected to the state Supreme Court in 2012.
Despite Moore’s order, hundreds of jubilant couples had received marriage licenses, or the promise of them, as of Tuesday in at least 19 of the state’s 67 counties, including those encompassing Montgomery, Huntsville and Birmingham, compared to just seven on Monday. In Elmore County, a Montgomery suburb, Probate Judge John E. Enslen said in a statement Tuesday that “the dust has quickly settled” and it was clear same-sex marriages were allowed.
“Whether national or not, it now applies to Alabama,” he said.
Robert Povilat and Milton Persinger were among the couples waiting in Mobile. They said they would return every day until they were able to get a license there.
“We sat and waited all day for them to open a window” on Monday, Povilat said. “They never did.”
Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis said he closed the marriage license section of his office because of “conflicting orders” from Moore and U.S. District Judge Callie Granade. Davis said he will keep the section closed until he gets additional clarification, which could come after Thursday’s hearing.
Moore said probate judges were not bound by Granade’s order because the judges were not defendants in an earlier lawsuit brought by two women seeking recognition of their California marriage.
In Limestone County near Huntsville, Probate Judge Charles Woodruff said he sought legal advice because of the conflicting opinions, but decided to begin issuing same-sex licenses Tuesday.
“I wasn’t sure what the law was,” Woodruff said. “I have never received an order from the chief justice of the Supreme Court in an email before.”
Farther north in Autauga County, a woman was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after offering to perform a same-sex wedding inside a courthouse.
Sheriff Joe Sedinger said Probate Judge Alfred Booth, who hasn’t allowed marriage ceremonies in his office since gay marriage became legal in Alabama, called him after Anne Susan Diprizio, who identified herself as a minister, offered to marry a lesbian couple who had just received their license. Deputies found Diprizio kneeling and refusing to leave.
Gov. Robert Bentley, a Republican and a Southern Baptist, said he believes strongly that marriage is between one man and one woman, but that the issue should be “worked out through the proper legal channels” and not through defiance of the law.
He noted that Alabama is about to be in the spotlight again with the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was passed after civil rights marchers were attacked and beaten in Selma, Ala. — events chronicled in the Oscar-nominated movie “Selma.”
“I don’t want Alabama to be seen as it was 50 years ago when a federal law was defied. I’m not going to do that,” Bentley said. “I’m trying to move this state forward.”
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