MARRIAGE WATCH

Alabama Minister Arrested Trying To Marry Same-Sex Couple; Obama Predicts Major National Shift

Screen Shot 2015-02-11 at 12.04.11 PMThis can’t be the first time these words have been connected in a sentence: Things are a mess in Alabama.

What do you get when a state’s chief justice (in this case Ray Moore, the same idiot who defied a federal court order to remove a monument to the 10 commandments from the state courthouse) orders state judges to disobey the ruling of a federal judge who has determined that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional? It’s not the set up to a joke. Alabama. You get Alabama.

And the situation is a bit confusing. Some counties are issuing marriage licenses to eager same-sex couples (see map, via New York Times), and some have closed up shop altogether, preventing both gay and straight couples from tying the knot.

In Autauga County, a woman named Anne Susan Diprizio was actually arrested after offering to perform a wedding ceremony for a lesbian couple who’d just received a license. Anne, who identified herself as a minister, now faces a charge of disorderly conduct following a dispute with Probate Judge Alfred Booth. Booth isn’t allowing same-sex marriages in his office despite the federal ruling.

Gov. Bentley, a Republican and a Southern Baptist, said “I don’t want Alabama to be seen as it was 50 years ago when a federal law was defied. I’m not going to do that. I’m trying to move this state forward.”

A federal judge has set a hearing that could determine if all counties must issue licenses.

Hopefully none of this will even matter soon. President Obama, speaking to Buzzfeed, predicted that:

“My sense is that the Supreme Court is about to make a shift, one that I welcome, which is to recognize that — having hit a critical mass of states that have recognized same-sex marriage — it doesn’t make sense for us to now have this patchwork system.”

h/t HuffPost

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