Alabama still split on gay nuptials
More counties allow marriages; others refuse, triggering suit
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — More Alabama courthouses allowed same-sex marriages Tuesday despite objections from the state’s chief justice, but other counties still refused — prompting a new round of federal court action.
In Mobile, the state’s second-largest city, the window that normally issues marriage licenses was closed as a gay couple waited. A federal judge scheduled a hearing for Thursday on a request by gay couples to force Mobile County to issue same-sex marriage licenses.
Meanwhile, another lawsuit was filed against the county probate judge there.
One of the defendants in that lawsuit was Chief Justice Roy Moore, who ordered probate judges not to allow same-sex unions in defiance of a federal judge and the U.S. Supreme Court, which allowed the marriages to start Monday.
Moore’s order caused confusion in Alabama. At least two of the state’s 67 counties weren’t issuing licenses, but an exact number wasn’t immediately clear. At least 10 counties were handing out licenses Tuesday, including three that hadn’t issued any a day earlier because of Moore’s order.
Elmore County Probate Judge John Enslen said in a statement Tuesday that “the dust has quickly settled” and it was clear same-sex marriages were allowed in the state.
“Whether national or not, it now applies to Alabama,” he said.
Robert Povilat and Milton Persinger were in Mobile on Tuesday, waiting to obtain a marriage license. They said they would return every day until they were able to get one there.
“We sat and waited all day for them to open a window. They never did,” Povilat said, referring to Monday.
Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis said he closed the marriage license section of his office because of “conflicting orders” from a federal judge and Moore.
Davis said he will keep the section closed until he gets additional clarification, and that could come during the hearing Thursday by U.S. District Judge Callie Granade.
Moore said probate judges were not bound by Granade’s order last month overturning Alabama’s ban on gay marriage because the judges were not defendants in the lawsuit filed by two women seeking recognition of their California marriage.
“It’s my duty to speak up when I see the jurisdiction of our courts being intruded by unlawful federal authority,” the 67-year-old Republican chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court said.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the start of gay marriages in Alabama on Monday morning, and hundreds of jubilant couples received marriage licenses in Montgomery, Birmingham and other cities, making Alabama the 37th state where gays can legally wed.
Kelli and Lisa Day balanced toddlers on their hips after getting their marriage license in Montgomery. The couple has been together for more than 20 years and together have four children, ages 1 through 14. Kelli Day said she wasn’t sure this day would come in her lifetime.
“We just want to be legal. We already are committed and have a family. But if one of us dies, our children are not protected,” Kelli Day said.
Russell County Probate Judge Alford Parden said his office had turned away at least one same-sex couple because of Moore’s order. Parden said he felt caught between state and federal court orders.
“I think every probate judge in the state feels that way,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate event for all of us.”
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 was also named as a defendant in the Mobile lawsuit.
The governor 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.
“I don’t want Alabama to be seen as it was 50 years ago when a federal law was defied,” Bentley said. “I’m trying to move this state forward.”
Also Tuesday, President Barack Obama’s longtime political adviser disclosed in a new book that Obama feigned opposition to gay marriage for most of his political career, compromising his true beliefs out of concern it could hurt him with voters.
David Axelrod, who served as a top White House adviser after helping Obama get elected, said Obama begrudgingly followed his advice that he would face strong opposition from black religious leaders and others if he let it be known he supported gay marriage.
Axelrod’s disclosure affirmed what was widely suspected for years: that Obama’s May 2012 announcement that he supported gay marriage came long after the president had personally come to that conclusion.
The year earlier, Obama and the White House had started saying his position was “evolving,” leading many to believe he was holding off on a public embrace of gay marriage for fear it could damage his re-election prospects.
“If Obama’s views were ‘evolving’ publicly, they were fully evolved behind closed doors,” Axelrod wrote in the memoir Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.