The adage that holds "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" has a critical, inherent limitation. It assumes that whenever history is repeated, the repeat is the result of forgetting the first time it happened. Today, in 2015, history is repeating itself in one particular U.S state, but this state has not forgotten its sad and sorry legacy of ignoring laws that it doesn't like whenever it wants to continue to persecute and ostracise a group of people that it doesn't like. Today, the LGBT people who live in this state are discovering that Alabama is not such a sweet home after all.
It was January 14, 1963, when then-Governor of Alabama, Democrat George Wallace, declared that Alabama would have segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. 52 years later, an immoral jurist who is rotten to the absolute core with hatred, bigotry, prejudice, and a self-avowed desire to violently act on these prejudices, combined with laughable probate judges whose conduct is gutless at best and criminal at worst, and topped off by ignorant, narrow-minded citizens who are responsible for them being there, have turned Wallace's words from promise to prophecy.
When a federal judge declares a state law unconstitutional, and enjoins its enforcement, and the state's judicial officers ask if the judgement applies to all of them, and the judge says, 'Yes it does,' and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denies a stay of the injunction, and the Supreme Court of the United States denies a stay of the injunction, and the injunction goes into effect, in theory, the situation should be relatively straightforward and clear. The unconstitutional law is to stop being enforced. Alabama Supreme Court Chief Injustice Roy Moore, however, doesn't see it that way. When the aforementioned scenario applied to the state's same-sex marriage ban, he issued an order to all the state's probate judges, claiming to prohibit them from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. I say 'claiming to prohibit them' because Chief Injustice Moore cannot actually do this. He doesn't apparently know that federal courts override state courts on questions of federal law. Well actually, I'm sure he does. He just doesn't care. After all, what does the rule of law matter when you're trying to maintain your oppression of your own citizens, the citizens that he thinks, incidentally, should be put to death?
Of course, nobody can say that they didn't see this coming. George Wallace isn't the only Alabama government official to have ordered defiance of the law before Chief Injustice Moore now. Another one to have done so is, you guessed it, Chief Injustice Moore. In 2001, he installed a monument of the Ten Commandments at the Alabama Supreme Court building, because, you know, those are the supreme laws of the land. He was sued for the obvious violation, well that really is an understatement, evisceration is more like it. For the obvious evisceration of the Establishment Clause, he was sued, and was ordered to take it down by a federal judge in 2002. He refused, violated the order, and was removed from his post as Chief Injustice in 2003. So why is he back again? Well, in 2012, the people of Alabama decided that they wanted their Chief Injustice to be a man who had broken federal court orders and previously been removed from the same post for doing so. So they elected him back into the position. Ah, yes. Electing a man who has violated federal court orders because he believes he is bound to follow a non-existent God's non-existent laws to the position of Chief Injustice of a state Supreme Court, where he will serve under a Constitution that requires that there be no establishment of religion. What could go wrong.
Chief Injustice Moore doesn't stand for justice. And neither does Alabama, for that matter. In the state, justice is dead. It's deader than how dead Antonin Scalia says the Constitution is.
Of course, not all of the blame can be pinned on Chief Injustice Moore. After all, it is the state's probate judges that are responsible for enforcing the ban. And the majority of them has absurdly heeded Chief Injustice Moore's absurd order and are refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. They cite the confusion caused over the conflicting orders issued by District Judge Callie Granade as a reason to abstain from the law, when in fact, there is no confusion. Federal courts override state courts on questions of federal law. That you cannot see this begs the question: were you educated at Bob Jones University?
They claim a threat from Chief Injustice Moore of possible disciplinary action taken against them by Governor Robert Bentley if they issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples as a reason to not do so, when Governor Bentley, the only person to show even a skerrick of common sense (and I mean only a skerrick) in this saga, has expressly stated that he will not do so. There's also a political question, as probate judges are elected. They are elected by the same people who voted to ban same-sex marriage in 2006 by 81%, and who, in 2012, voted for a Supreme Court Chief Injustice who thinks that gay people should be executed. What pressure do you think might be perceived from these ordinary citizens?
So ultimately, these probate judges are refusing to abide by a federal court order that binds them because they are afraid of a Chief Injustice who cannot do anything to them, and of the citizens of the state, whose positions on this issue could not be clearer. At best, it's gutless and cowardly. At worst, it's criminal contempt of court. Either way, it's identical to 1963.
But just in case the fact that the situation in 2015 is identical to the situation that existed with virulent racists living in virulently racist Alabama in the virulently racist 1950s and 1960s is unbelievable to the point that you can't believe it, this will help you to accept this all too ugly reality. An ordained minister has been arrested for refusing to leave a probate judge's office in an attempt to enforce the law that the probate judge wouldn't, by marrying a same-sex couple. She was carried away by a sherriff, physically blocked from enforcing the order. A similar kind of physical block to, say, George Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door.
Of course, none of this reprehensible kind of thinking is limited to Chief Injustice Moore, or even to Alabama. Instead, it's a powerful insight into how much of the anti-equality reaction thinks. This is a reaction that has, for over a year-and-a-half now since the Windsor decision, demonstrated its understanding of law to be so hilariously flawed that it has reached the point where we, on the right side of history, have accepted that these people, who would wipe the Fourteenth Amendment on their behind before accepting that it grants the freedom to marry for all, will never stop outdoing themselves with their own stupidity. Like Mike Huckabee laughably declaring that courts cannot order the legalization of same-sex marriage. Apparently, he's never heard of Marbury v. Madison. Or the nation's most prominent anti-equality organization consistently stating that everything being done in the legal fight for marriage equality is lawless. Like how the Obama administration's implementation of the Windsor decision was lawless. Or how its recognition of the 1300 same-sex marriage performed in Utah between December 20, 2013 and January 6, 2014 was lawless. Or how state attorneys-general who refuse to defend laws that are so blatantly unconstitutional are lawless. Or how the court orders in favor of marriage equality are lawless, even as they come from the courts themselves.
What's not lawless, however, is the defiance and violation of these lawful federal court orders. That's very lawful. That not lawless at all. It wasn't lawless when you called for such defiance in Kansas, was it, NOM? It wasn't lawless when you called for such defiance in Florida, was it, NOM? And it certainly wasn't lawless when you, in 2015, called for such defiance in the Alabama of 1963, was it, NOM. No. Instead, actually obeying the law, by which I mean the Constitution, the highest law of the land, not the Ten Commandments or a non-existent God's alleged design for marriage, is lawless. But you've gone even further, ludicrously describing federal court rulings in favour of marriage equality as tyranny, language, of course, that has no shades of George Wallace at all. After all, he only said in his 1963 inaugural address "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny." And to top it all off, this is what has come from a group that lost its mind when laws banning same-sex marriage were broken. But you are right about one thing, having recently written on your blog that today is 1963 for marriage. It absolutely is. Which takes us back to Alabama.
This is not a state failing to learn from its mistakes. After all, you can't learn from your mistakes if you don't believe you have made any. And when you do the wrong thing this many times, with each time leading to an incident so controversial it couldn't be forgotten by a goldfish let alone Alabama, and repeatedly tarnish your already dull legacy in the process, you are not forgetting the past. You are knowingly, wilfully and deliberately repeating it. We are left with the inevitable conclusion that this is a state that truly and sincerely believes that they have the right to disregard the law to continue their mistreatment of a group of people that they believe are sick and evil.
So, in conclusion: Congratulations, Alabama. It truly is in order. You still have not yet cleaned up the legacy that you acquired as a result of the evil actions of bigoted and prejudiced government officials from 52 years ago, officials that you elected. And yet, you've still been able to repeat this situation, having apparently learned nothing in those 52 years. Thanks to Chief Injustice Moore, the gutless at best and criminal at worst probate judges, and the ordinary citizens of the state who decided that they be placed in those roles, you are going to have to start that clean up all over again.