Posted on 01/08/2016 11:44:52 AM PST by wagglebee
MONTGOMERY, Alabama, January 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Alabama's top justice has ordered the state's judges to uphold the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, despite the U.S. Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision last June redefining marriage.
Chief Justice Roy Moore said probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue marriage licenses in conflict with the state marriage amendment pending a decision from the Alabama Supreme Court.
"Confusion and uncertainty exist among the probate judges of this State as to the effect of Obergefell on the 'existing orders' in API," Moore said in a January 6 administrative order. "Many probate judges are issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in accordance with Obergefell; others are issuing marriage licenses only to couples of the opposite gender or have ceased issuing all marriage licenses. This disparity affects the administration of justice in this State."
Moore said he did not intend to defy the Supreme Court but that there were "conflicting orders" between the U.S. Supreme Court and the Alabama Supreme Court, according to a report from the Montgomery Advertiser.
The Alabama court upheld the state's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act and 2006 state constitutional amendment defining marriage, approved by a substantial majority (81.2%) of Alabama residents, last March.
Two months prior, in January, U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade had struck down the state's marriage protection laws, ruling that they violated same-sex couples' equal protection and due process rights.
Moore told the state's probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples at the time because it would violate state law.
And he pressed Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley to oppose the ruling, telling him in a letter, "As Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, I will continue to recognize the Alabama Constitution and the will of the people overwhelmingly expressed in the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment. Be advised that I stand with you to stop judicial tyranny and any unlawful opinions issued without constitutional authority."
The case before the Alabama Supreme Court is still pending, and Moore said the orders in that case prohibiting same-sex marriage licenses remained in force until the Supreme Court made a ruling.
"I did give an order that they were to follow the existing orders of the Alabama Supreme Court," he said on Wednesday. "That's simple, black letter law. The effect of Obergefell on those existing orders has to be determined by the Alabama Supreme Court."
Moore has acted to protect marriage before, writing to all 50 U.S. governors in 2014 urging them to protect marriage with an amendment.
Religious liberty and marriage advocates welcomed Moore's administrative order.
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) said that Moore's order is part of developing resistance in America to the Supreme Court's attempt to legislate from the bench when it comes to marriage.
"The American people reject judicial activism of the US Supreme Court and their attempt to redefine marriage," its statement said. "They continue to support marriage as it has existed throughout our nation's history, the union of one man and one woman."
"I applaud Chief Justice Roy Moore for this order reaffirming the marriage law in Alabama," said Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver.
"In Alabama and across America, state judiciaries and legislatures are standing up against the federal judiciary or anyone else who wants to come up with some cockeyed view that somehow the Constitution now births some newfound notion of same-sex marriage," Staver stated in a ChristianNewsWire report. "The opinion of five lawyers on the U.S. Supreme Court regarding same-sex marriage is lawless and without legal or historical support."
Exactly!
Wonderful!!
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The DOJ has expressed “concern”.
I’m writing in Roy Moore for Pesident if the GOP offers another bum of a candidate.
Too damned bad.
Why not ignore the laws?
Obungo does it everyday. In fact he makes up his own.
F U B O!
Although it is true that we are increasingly becoming a lawless society: e.g., Hillary gets a pass on actions that would land anyone else in jail; illegal intruders that ignore our laws are granted 'sanctuary' status; etc - Judge Moore is upholding the Law. His State has a law that marriage is between one man and one woman. The Supreme Court does not make law, nor does the Constitution grant them say over such matters in a State.
You can’t kick “Right Reason” out of a “Just Law” and all unjust law (irrational laws that promote vice) are “null and void” (Justice John Marshall).
Sodomizing others is TOTAL DEHUMANIZATION and SATANISM. Promoting such dehumanization and an irrational RELIGION in ANY “Just” law is unconstitutional and irrational and removes the Court from Reason and “...the Laws of Nature and nature’s God”—the basis of our Justice System.
Only Christian Ethics were based on Right Reason—it is why only Christian Ethics are aligned with Natural Law (reason/science/logic). It is why only Christian Ethics can be promoted in a “Just Law”.
These judges (like above) have a DUTY to throw out evil “law” and we have the Natural Duty to disobey them (MLK, Jr./Birmingham and Nuremberg Trials).
Good for sanity/reason/science/truth in our “Justice” (virtue) System.
While I support Chief Alamama Justice Roy Moores stance against gay marriage, why does not he simply point out the following?
Not only does the Constitutions silence about marriage means that marriage is a unique, 10th Amendment-protected state power issue, but the constitutions silence about so-called gay ”marriage” means that it is not constitutionally protected right.
The states will play a large role in reversing the excesses of a runaway, tyrannical federal government.
Just as the founding fathers intended!
Other states should be ashamed for not doing the same.
Thanks wagglebee.
This is exactly how states should respond to a patently unconstitutional ruling handed down from the federal level. The Supreme Court has no Constitutional authority to create new law, new rights. They are interpreters. Everyone knows that same sex marriage is in no way protected or guaranteed by the constitution on any level. Its a farce. One may believe it should be and if that is the case it is the responsibility of those individuals to amend the constitution not the other way around.
Wait, what? The states have their own governments and constitutions and courts that the federal government is supposed to respect? When did this happen?
credit to him and respect and he is exactly right.
However, in this instance, and in many others as well, what the majority of we the people don't want was forced down our throats by naked judicial tyranny and our voices in dissent were ignored. If my assessment of the court's brazen over-riding of the rights of all Americans in order to cater to the desires of a relatively small minority is out of line I am not adverse to correction by learned legal scholars. I'm not a Constitutional expert by any means, but I'm pretty sure that the founders didn't envision same-sex "marriage" as an unwritten provision of the same set of laws that were intended, in part at least, to protect the sacred institution of marriage from the immoral desires and acts of adulterers and/or homosexual deviants.
Exactly right. That's pretty much what I intended to convey in my previous post, but you did it better using many fewer words and with more clarity of the intent of those words than I could muster up.
I'll see the DOJ's "concern" and raise it by 1000 dollars worth of outrage over the Supremes' unGodly decision to legalize immoral homosexual acts disguised as marital love and affection. Sodom and Gomarrah didn't get away with it unscathed and neither will America.
God is not mocked, He will repay. So says Holy Writ, and you can take it to the bank.
There I go again, posting comments that are almost the same as what I posted before. I’ve simply got to start reading my previous comments before posting basically the same comments all over again. That’s what happens when I overstep my assigned bedtime and then try to make my wife think I’m doing something important.
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