The battle over gay marriage erupted on Tuesday in a central Alabama county, where a woman was charged with disorderly conduct after offering to perform a marriage ceremony in the office of a judge who had stopped officiating the ceremonies.
Alabama is the 37th state to allow same-sex marriage, but on Tuesday some county judges, acting at the direction of Alabama’s chief justice, still refused to abide by a higher court ruling. A federal judge scheduled a hearing for Thursday on a request by four same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses in Mobile county on Monday.
Anne Susan DiPrizio, an ordained minister, told the Guardian she was at the Autauga County probate office on Tuesday morning to show solidarity with couples caught in the legal battlefield over same-sex marriage. There she met Courtney Cannon and Morgan Plunkett, who came to the courthouse to get a marriage license.
DiPrizio offered to perform the ceremony, but she said Al Booth, the Autauga county probate judge, refused to allow it. She said Booth told her: “If I let these two get married, I have to let everyone get married.”
As they bantered, she said the judge became increasingly more angry with her and he eventually called the sheriff.
Deputies with the local sherif’s department said the judge’s office had asked DiPrizio to leave several several times before threatening her with arrest. When the officers arrived, DiPrizio reportedly got up from her seat and kneeled on the floor, the Montgomery Advertiser reported, quoting Dave Hill, chief deputy of the Autauga County Sheriff’s Office. She was handcuffed and walked across the street to jail. Her bail was set at $1,000.
Cannon and Plunkett told the paper that they didn’t know DiPrizio before that morning, but said they were dismayed by her arrest.
“She was standing up for our rights to get married,” Cannon said.
DiPrizio said she doesn’t regret her actions, and plans to return to the courthouse again on Wednesday to stand up for gay marriage, which she calls a “human right”.
“What this judge was doing to these young women is indefensible,” DiPrizio said. “I will pray for judge Booth. He’s afraid, bless his heart.”
Last month, US district court judge Callie Granade struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, but immediately placed that decision on hold, delaying marriages. The hold expired on Monday, which should have paved the way for gay couples to begin marrying across the state.
On Sunday, however, the state’s chief justice, Roy Moore, issued an 11th-hour order, instructing the state’s probate judges not to obey the ruling. “Effective immediately, no probate judge of the state of Alabama nor any agent or employee of any Alabama probate judge shall issue or recognize a marriage license that is inconsistent” with state law, Moore said in the order.
The US supreme court on Monday declined a request by the state attorney general to further delay same-sex marriages, after the chief justice’s orders created a tangled legal landscape for judges and couples to navigate.
Moore’s order defies the supremacy clause of the US constitution, which gives federal rulings precedence over lower court rulings. But his comments touched off a judicial rebellion in the state where voters are skeptical of the federal government and lawmakers champion states’ rights. The ban echoes a similar attempt by the state to stop interracial marriages after a 1967 supreme court decision struck down the bans as unconstitutional.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
