Same-sex marriages have begin in Alabama, and this
editorial sums up the situation:
Get out of the doorway.
We had hoped the day would end without such an admonition. The federal judicial system has spoken in Alabama, a U.S. District Court judge ruling that marriage must be available equally to all Alabamians, and the U.S. Supreme Court refusing an 11th-hour attempt to block that order.
But progress seldom happens all at once, not in Alabama and not where the most profound events are concerned. [...] Get out of the way. Don't block progress. Don't block freedom.
Because too often we have some variation of George Wallace blocking the doorway to the University of Alabama.
It's the wrong role for Alabama and always has been.
We have said that the right to marry is, in our view, an unalienable one. Once afforded to one American citizen, it must be available, equally, to all. The U.S Constitution trumps every counter argument any state constitution or state law says. We are not allowed to enshrine our bias against their marriage in state law and expect it to be upheld.
Amy Davidson at The New Yorker:
The Supreme Court’s decision was important on a number of counts. First, for the families of Alabama that have been denied the protection and respect that comes with marriage. Second, it is a strong sign that the Court, which is set to hear arguments this spring on whether there is a fifty-state constitutional right to same-sex marriage, knows where it is headed, and it is in the direction of equality. (The order was accompanied by a dissent signed only by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, whose main argument was that the Court should allow states to wait for its final ruling on “this important constitutional question.”) Third, it made it clear that there is a definite federal interest in the marriage issue. [...]
As I’ve written before, until the Supreme Court rules, the South will be the final battleground in the marriage fight, in part because there are not so many other arenas left, and in part because there are still judges like Roy Moore, who act as if the region needs protection from the love of its own residents.
For more on this story, head below the fold.
Richard Fausset at The New York Times has an in-depth profile of the judge who's thrown Alabama into "disarray" on the issue:
Behind his heavy wooden desk in the judicial building Monday morning, Chief Justice Moore, a confident, 67-year-old West Point graduate and Vietnam veteran, was unapologetic and firm in his position that the federal judiciary has seriously overreached in its effort to impose same-sex marriage in Alabama — a state where 81 percent of voters passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage in 2006.
“If we accept this without contest, without standing up for what’s pure and simple constitutional law, then we, too, bow down to unlawful authority,” he said. “And that’s not the role of government leaders in the state.”
The matter seems custom-made for Chief Justice Moore, who had already earned hero status among many conservatives for his Ten Commandments stand, his argument that America is a fundamentally Christian nation and his concerns about overreach by the federal judiciary.
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post adds his take and a bit of history on Alabama's historic holdouts:
Roy Moore's move to block gay marriage in Alabama is drawing comparisons to George Wallace's "stand in the schoolhouse door" in 1963, as Philip Bump wrote just a moment ago.
But school desegregation is hardly the only time Alabama has been among the final holdouts when it comes to social change. And thus, nor is it the only time the Wallace comparisons have been drawn.
Back in 2000, Alabama became the last state in the country to overturn its ban on interracial marriage. And despite more than three decades having passed since the Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional (rendering such bans effectively moot), more than 40 percent of Alabamians still voted against overturning it.
Charles Dean at AL.com:
I hope the governor will follow his instincts and remember to be the governor of all the people, something Wallace forgot.
Today was to have been the day that some in our state had looked forward to with hope for years. For others today was going to be a day they feared. Bentley knows he is the governor of both.
In Alabama, that represents progress.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post:
It's trivial to compare the late-Sunday-night announcement from Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore -- Moore asked that local authorities ignore a federal mandate to issue same-sex marriage licenses -- to the most famous action ever taken by a governor of that state: George Wallace's 1963 blockade of the auditorium door at the University of Alabama. [...] In another sense, though, Moore's action is broader than simply another Alabama elected official seeking to make a futile statement. (Moore's position is an elected office.) It also reflects the ongoing national split between two political groups, each of which sees itself as the true democratic representative of the people.
Todd Purdum at POLITICO runs down the GOP's Alabama problem:
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s defiance of a federal court order on gay marriage is just the latest in a long line of bitter states’ rights fights on issues from school integration to the Confederate battle flag – and the latest potentially embarrassing political sideshow for the 2016 field of GOP presidential hopefuls.
In the end, some veteran Republican strategists suggest, Moore’s order barring county probate judges from issuing gay marriage licenses may serve mainly to harden the entrenched positions of supporters and opponents of a legal issue on which public opinion has been shifting with lightning speed, and which the Supreme Court seems likely to resolve by this summer.
Moore’s decision, however, increases the chances that Republican presidential candidates will be forced to discuss the issue — in the racially freighted framework of states’ rights, no less — before extremely conservative voters in the heat of a primary campaign.