States Rights In Action

Sweet Stupid Home Alabama.  

Late last month, a federal district court ruled that Alabama's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, and ordered the state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

On Sunday, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore ordered the state's probate judges to refuse marriage licenses to any gay couples.  Moore said "U.S. District courts have no authority to redefine marriage."  (Ol' Roy reserves that authority for himself.)  Moore contends that gay marriage is a states rights issue and that if same-sex couples are allowed to marry, soon we'll have "fathers marrying their daughters and mothers marrying sons."  (Seriously, he said that.)  He said he doesn't mind if gay people live together, but he, Judge Roy, must "protect the institution of marriage."  

(Ol' Roy is the same piece-of-work judge who once installed a huge granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments in front of the state's judicial building.  He was ousted from the court for refusing to remove it, but was later reelected.  Alabama sure can pick 'em.)

On Monday, Alabama asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay the district court order, pending the gay marriage cases to heard and decided later this year.  The Supremes declined to delay the order, with the only dissents coming from, predictably, Scalia and Thomas.  SCOTUS's ruling gives approval to same-sex marriage in Alabama.

Except there's still Ol' Roy's conflicting order out there too.  So for now, some counties in Alabama issue same-sex marriage licenses, but others don't.  Apparently, it's now up to individual probate judges.

"Pardon me, sir.  Can you you tell us if we're in a 'marriage equality' county or a 'God hates fags' county?"

This is what specious states rights arguments so often give us -- a mess, with important decisions made by the likes of Judge Roy Moore, a red-neck Bible-thumper who vows to go down fighting.

Fighting against the turn of the wheel, against human rights, against progress, against history.  And just like so many times before, the battle is already over.


See all this ruin?
What are you doing, Alabama?
You got the rest of the union to help you along.
What's going wrong?

-- Neil Young