Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is
calling on probate judges to not issue marriage licenses to gay and
lesbian couples when it is expected to become legal on Monday.
In a letter Tuesday to probate judges,
Moore states that they are not required to issue such licenses.
U.S. District Judge Callie “Ginny”
Granade declared the state's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional in
two similar cases, both of which are set to take effect on Monday,
February 9. Officials late Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to put
the rulings on hold.
(Related: Alabama
claims marriage makes “less sense” for gays in asking Supreme
Court for stay.)
“I hope this memorandum will assist
weary, beleaguered, and perplexed probate judges to unravel the
meaning of the actions of the federal court in Mobile, namely that
the rulings in the marriage cases do not require you to issue
marriage licenses that are illegal under Alabama law,” Moore wrote.
He added that judges who issue such
licenses “would in my view be acting in violation of their oaths to
uphold the Alabama Constitution.”
Moore was ousted from the bench in 2003
for refusing to remove from public property a monument of the Ten
Commandments which he commissioned. Voters reinstated him a decade
later.