"The Sad Truth About Alabama..."

Erik Obermiller and David Roby received their marriage certificate from Jefferson

County Court. In Alabama, seven out of 10 oppose same-sex marriage.

Credit Andrea Morales for The New York Times

In Defiance on Gay Marriage, Alabama Sets Itself Far Apart

Campbell Robertson and Shaila Dewan
February 10, 2015

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — On Sunday night, Blake Guinn, a 21-year-old city councilman in a deeply conservative suburb here, looked on Facebook and learned that, once again, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the State Supreme Court had defied a federal court in the name of state sovereignty. Somehow, it did not seem entirely unexpected.

“I support states’ rights, too,” said Mr. Guinn, a self-described Christian conservative who voted for Chief Justice Moore in 2012. “But I just feel like time and time again we pick the wrong and losing battles.”

Alabama is a conservative state where more than a third of the residents are evangelical Protestants, seven out of 10 oppose same-sex marriage — including blacks and whites alike — and the state motto is a bellicose “We Dare Defend Our Rights.”

Alabama is not unique among states in strongly opposing same-sex marriage, and it is not alone in bristling under a federal court order that goes against a substantial popular majority.

It is, however, the only state where probate judges who would issue same-sex marriage licenses were instructed not to comply with a federal court order. “In terms of what’s been going on in marriage equality in the past 18 months, this is really the only type of defiance of its kind,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign.

James Strawser, left, and John Humphrey waited Tuesday at the Probate Court in Mobile, Ala. For a second day in a row, the court was closed, and it was not issuing any same-sex marriage licenses. 

Credit Jeff Haller for The New York Times

Such brazen and often futile campaigns are practically hard-wired into the state’s character. Long after George Wallace’s stand against integration in the schoolhouse door, to which Chief Justice Moore’s stance has been inevitably compared, the state’s record of taking on the federal government in long-shot battles has continued to set it apart even from its conservative neighbors.

In the 1990s, Gov. Fob James argued that the Bill of Rights did not apply to states. In 2003, Chief Justice Moore was removed from his first term for refusing to take down a two-ton monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building. And in 2011, the State Legislature passed a sweeping immigration enforcement law, much of which was later blocked in court for encroaching on federal turf.

“It’s like our oxygen is defiance and our identity is aggrievement,” said Diane McWhorter, an Alabama native and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about civil rights-era Birmingham, “Carry Me Home.”

While saying that Chief Justice Moore and Wallace were “on the wrong side of history,” Ms. McWhorter also said their losing battles brought to mind one of the icons of Alabama literature, the proto-civil rights lawyer Atticus Finch, who unsuccessfully, and unpopularly, defended a black man in a small-town trial. “What they have in common is their heroism is bound up in the futility of their cause,” she said.

This often pugnacious insistence on state sovereignty is a point of pride; in 2012, the speaker of the state’s House of Representatives appointed a Commission on the Protection of Alabama Values and States Rights. But it also carries a burdensome legacy, forcing some state leaders into a tightrope act. In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Gov. Robert Bentley said he disagreed with the federal order but insisted that defiance was inappropriate, particularly around the coming anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery.

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“I don’t want Alabama to be seen as it was 50 years ago when a federal law was defied,” he said. “I’m trying to move this state forward.”

Alabama has moved a long way in 50 years. German, Korean and Japanese auto plants are part of the landscape, a large Airbus jetliner production facility is set to open in Mobile this year, and Birmingham has become a destination in the highly competitive field of new Southern cuisine. The monolith of public opinion that once characterized the white establishment is neither as white nor as monolithic: Rather than the old ways of retrenchment, the recent court rulings have sparked a lively debate here on talk radio, in the newspapers and over Facebook. And Alabama, like the nation, has its own divide between culturally diverse cities like this one and more conservative and rural areas.

Some see progress in the state’s willingness to acknowledge the past. Last week a historical marker honoring Fred Gray, a civil rights lawyer whose clients included Rosa Parks and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was unveiled in view of the Alabama Supreme Court, where Chief Justice Moore presides.

Alabama’s record of taking on the federal government includes the 

stand against integration by George Wallace, right, in 1963. 

Credit Associated Press

“It lists all these cases against the state of Alabama, all of which the state lost,” Mr. Gray said. “The State Department of Tourism is one of the ones who sponsored the plaque.”

Losing is part of the point, however, said Dan T. Carter, the author of a book on Wallace called “The Politics of Rage.”

“George Wallace knew he was going to lose, too,” he said. “But for political reasons it was important to emphasize that you were resisting to the end.” He added:. “That is this kind of cultural tradition. It is part of this white Southern mystique — you lost the Civil War, but you went down fighting.”

Chief Justice Moore has dismissed comparisons between him and figures like Wallace, arguing that his emphatic defense of state sovereignty should not be stained by its misuse in the past.

“From a moral perspective I have no hesitancy to argue states’ rights,” he said in an interview on Monday. “Indeed Alabama and any other state that prohibited racial equality was wrong. And if they prohibited such, what they did was wrong. But that is not a disclaimer over states’ rights.”

While his recent actions may elicit cringes among the economic development crowd and the business community, his views on same-sex marriage and federal overreach are widely echoed across the state.

“Two girls and two guys together in a relationship?” asked Junior Day, who was a few blocks from the Mobile County Courthouse on Tuesday afternoon. “It needs to be protested. Where are the people protesting this?”

Mr. Day’s friend, who declined to give his name, saw it as forced intrusion. “It’s not moral, and it’s not fair to shove this down the people of Alabama’s throats,” he said.

Both supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage agree that Chief Justice Moore’s efforts to forestall the federal order would likely be temporary and gain little in the end. But there is a longstanding tradition here of going down swinging.

“We have grown up with that psyche here in Alabama,” said Mark Kennedy, a former State Supreme Court justice who is married to George Wallace’s daughter. “It’s all about fighting. That’s why we’re so crazy about college football.”

Campbell Robertson reported from Birmingham, and Shaila Dewan from New York. Richard Fausset contributed reporting from Montgomery, Ala., and Kalyn Wolfe from Mobile, Ala.

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The sad truth about the state of Alabama is that it is a state steeped in a history of oppression and violence against the marginalized minorities within her borders.  And yet just as it was 50 years ago this year when Dr. Martin Luther King called on America and Alabamians in particular to live up to the creed of our nation, that all men are created equal, we are once again at the crossroads of our country's future.  

We will learn soon enough if the ingenious system of checks and balances that our founding fathers put in place is still working.  When the Supreme Court rules this June on marriage equality, we will find out if we as a nation (if not Alabama as a state) are able to answer the moral obligation to rise above the limitations of man-made laws steeped in hatred.

"Fear Eats the Soul"