Probate judges in at least 16 counties plan to put the kibosh on the courthouse nuptials, although most said they’d still issue licenses, according to media reports.
“I’m not going to be a party to it,” Geneva County Probate Judge Fred Hamic told the Associated Press. “I was raised in a Christian home, and I was taught that it is a sin.”
U.S. District Judge Callie Granade shot down Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriages in January.
A federal appeals court rejected State Attorney General Luther Strange’s request for a stay, paving the way for the state’s 68 probate judges to begin issuing licenses on Monday.
The law, however, doesn’t require the judges to actually marry anyone, the justices said.
“I’m not required to do that,”Enslen told the Montgomery Advertiser. “Some judges will choose to continue performing marriages and they can continue to do that.”
Enslen ripped same-sex marriage as “repugnant and repulsive to God” in an fiery editorial in January.
“In other words, I believe Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for just such unnatural conduct between the same sexes,"Enslen wrote.
Chilton County Judge Bobby Martin also cited religious beliefs and said he won’t perform weddings anymore.
“I guess all good things must come to an end,” Martin told the Clanton Advertiser, adding “I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, and because of that, I will not perform a ceremony for a couple that doesn’t fit in that criteria.”
The judges are following the lead of Chief Justice Roy Moore, who claimed they were not obligated to abide by Granade’s ground-breaking ruling.
“Lower federal courts are without authority to impose their own interpretation of federal constitutional law upon the state courts,” Moore wrote in one of twomemorandums obtained by AL.com.
Moore previously lost his job after he installed a monument celebrating the Ten Commandments at the Alabama Judicial Building.
He returned to the seat after winning an election in 2012.
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