Allow gays to wed, judge tells county

Ruling may help resolve Alabama split over issue.

MOBILE, ALA. — The federal judge who overturned Alabama’s gay marriage ban ordered a reluctant county to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, signaling to probate judges across the state that they should do the same.

About an hour after U.S. District Judge Callie Granade’s ruling, Mobile County opened up its marriage license office and started granting the documents to gay couples.

Gay rights advocates said they hoped Granade’s order would smooth an uneven legal landscape where gay couples have been able to marry in some Alabama counties and not in others. However, it wasn’t immediately clear what other judges would do.

At least 23 of Alabama’s 67 counties are issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

Robert Povilat and his partner Milton Persinger were the first to get a marriage license in Mobile County. They exchanged vows in the atrium of the probate office. “Ecstatic. Ecstatic. We’re married,” Povilat said.

Randall Marshall, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said he thought the ruling would give guidance to other probate judges and his group was ready to litigate the case county by county, if necessary.

“We hope other probate judges will look at this and see they too could soon be a defendant in a lawsuit if they don’t start treating everybody equally,” Marshall said.

Mobile and other counties had refused to issue the marriage licenses after Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore told probate judges on Sunday they didn’t have to because they were not defendants in the original case.

Moore on Thursday insisted he would continue to resist efforts to implement same-sex marriage in his state, even if the U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of gay marriage later this year.

“If it’s an unlawful mandate, you can refuse to mandate it. You can dissent to the United States Supreme Court,” Moore said in a testy interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day.”

Moore characterized the federal judge’s ruling that overturned the state’s ban as an “attempt by the federal court to control the state,” which he called a “federal intrusion into state sovereignty.”

AP Robert Povilat, left, and Milton Persinger were the first same-sex couple to get a marriage license in Mobile County. Opponents of gay marriage vowed to continue the fight.