Alabama top court upholds gay union ban

The chief justice of Alabama rul-ed that the state’s ban on same-sex marriages is legal and told probate judges there they had a “ministerial duty” to st-op issuing licenses to gay couples. The ruling, in an administrative or-der from Alabama chief justice Roy Moore on Wednesday, came seven months after the US Su-preme Court, in a historic 5-4 decision, held that states cannot prevent gay couples from marrying and that those that had refused to do so must now recognise such marriages.

Critics immediately dismissed Mr Moore’s contention that the high court ruling was limited in scope. They said th-ere was no question that the SC ruling extended nationwide.

Mr Moore, in a four-page decision, cited a state law under which “marriage is inherently a unique relationship between a man and a woman.” He argued that a legal judgement “only binds the parties to the case before the court” and noted that the case considered by the SC was brought on behalf of same-sex couples only from Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.