Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Alabama Justice Stands by Gay-Marriage Ban

(CN) - The Alabama Supreme Court dismissed a set of petitions filed by a probate judge and two conservative groups who wanted the state's ban on same-sex marriages to be enforced.

The one-sentence order dismissed pending motions and petitions filed at the court's invitation after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

However, in a concurrance to the March 4 decision, Chief Justice Roy Mooreof the Alabama Supreme Court said that previous state orders barring gay marriage remain and are valid under the federal constitution.

Moore called Obergefell "an unconstitutional exercise of judicial authority that usurps the legislative prerogative of the states to regulate their own domestic policy."

"In reality, the Obergefell majority presumes to amend the United States Constitution to create a right stated nowhere therein," he added. "That is a lawless act."

Moore also denounced passages from the Obergefell majority opinion by comparing them to "a romance novel" or the 1974 song "Feelings" by Morris Albert.

These passages include, "A truthful statement by same-sex couples of what was in their hearts had to remain unspoken," and "Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there."

Moore added that the Obergefell majority justices have overlooked "the reality that the purpose of law is to restrain behavior for the public good."

He quoted William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England" as calling gay sex ""an infamous crime against nature."

"Homosexuals who seek the dignity of marriage must first forsake the sexual habits that disqualify them from admission to that hallowed institution," Moore wrote.

"Sodomy has never been and never will be an act by which a marriage can be consummated," he added.

Children will be the "great sufferers," according to Moore, as they will be raised in "unnatural families that

contradict the created order."

Moore concluded his opinion by stating, "The great irony of the Supreme Court's embrace of the homosexual campaign to redefine marriage is that the homosexual movement has embraced marriage only for the purpose of destroying it. The ultimate goal of that movement is to drive the nation into a wasteland of sexual anarchy that consumes all moral values."

Moore notes that his court's ruling did not disturb its rulings from March 2015, that upheld the constitutionality of the state's Sanctity of Marriage Amendment and Alabama Marriage Protection Act.

Other justices of the Alabama Supreme Court weighed in with their own concurring opinions.

"I do not agree with the majority opinion in Obergefell; however, I do concede that its holding is binding authority on this Court," Justice Michael Bolin wrote.

"I further concur specially to note that the process of licensing of marriages in Alabama as we have known it may have been irreparably broken," he added.

Justice Tom Parker stated that the Obergefell decision "conclusively demonstrates that the rule of law is dead.

"'Five lawyers' - appointed to judgeships for life and practically unaccountable to the more than 320 million Americans they now arbitrarily govern - enlightened by 'new insights' into the true meaning of the word 'liberty,' determined that 'liberty' means that Americans have a new fundamental right only now discovered over 225 years since the Constitution was adopted," he added.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had referred to his colleagues as "five lawyers" in his Obergefell dissent.

"A group of judges can declare all it wants that two people of the same sex can 'marry,' but in the words of The Federalist No. 78, they cannot change 'the nature and reason of the thing' called marriage," Justice Glenn Murdock wrote.

"Marriage is what it is. No less so than any naturally occurring element on the periodic table," he added. "Yet, here we are."

Justice Greg Shaw noted that the U.S. Supreme Court did not provide relief for Kentucky state official Kim Davis from an injunction that required her to issue same-sex marriage licenses.

"The application was denied without any written dissents," Shaw observed. "If the dissenting Justices in Obergefell were sending coded messages to invite state officials to defy Obergefell, then would they have not at least issued dissents to denying relief to Davis, who was such a state official?"

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...