*Alabama becomes only US state not to issue same-sex marriage licenses
Quote:
ATLANTA — The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy S. Moore, on Wednesday effectively ordered probate judges in the state not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a move that could cloud the carrying out of the United States Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex unions.
Within hours of an administrative order, the probate court in Mobile County said on its website that it was “not issuing marriage licenses to any applicants until further notice.” That probate office, among the busiest in Alabama, was involved in the litigation that last year prompted a federal judge to strike down the state’s marriage restrictions as unconstitutional and, ultimately, issue an injunction forbidding probate judges “from enforcing the Alabama laws which prohibit or fail to recognize same-sex marriage.”
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Chief Justice Moore previously used an administrative order to try to derail same-sex nuptials in Alabama. On a Sunday night last February, hours before same-sex marriages were scheduled to begin in the state, he issued a similar order to probate judges, most of whom defied the edict.
On Wednesday, Chief Justice Moore, who is among the country’s most prominent religious conservatives, argued, in part, that probate judges should not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of a State Supreme Court decision that upheld Alabama’s marriage prohibitions. The conflicting decisions in Washington and Montgomery, the chief justice wrote, led to “confusion and uncertainty” among Alabama’s probate judges about how to apply the federal court’s opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
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