On Wednesday, probate courts in Alabama stopped issuing marriage licenses to gay couples as a result of the state’s Supreme Court ruling. The previous night, six out of nine justices voted in favor of blocking gay marriage in the state after the federal court allowed it.
Alabama, considered a conservative state, has traditionally been adamant in keeping its own laws. The justices commented in a court opinion on the right of the state to decide its own legislation.
“As it has done for approximately two centuries, Alabama law allows for ‘marriage’ between only one man and one woman,” said the court. “Nothing in the United States Constitution alters or overrides this duty,” it said in reference to the duty of the probate courts to keep the traditional definition of marriage.
The majority of justices argued that the people and not the government should decide the decision of marriage. Alabama’s high court justices are elected, not appointed.
“It is the people themselves, not the government, who must go about the business of working, playing, worshiping, and raising children in whatever society, whatever culture, whatever community is facilitated by the framework of laws that these same people, directly and through their representatives, choose for themselves,” said the court.
Proponents of same-sex marriage were upset at the news of the court order. Many claim that the state court does not have jurisdiction over the federal court to make such a ruling.
The decision made by Alabama’s Supreme Court varies greatly with the decision from other states to allow same-sex marriage. It is unclear whether proponents of gay marriage will try to overturn this ruling, or wait until the Supreme Court of the United States makes a final decision. The Alabama Supreme Court stated that it will not change its decision to block gay marriages until the Supreme Court of the United States makes a final ruling on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage for the nation in June.
