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AL Supreme Court Halts Issuance of Counterfeit Marriage Licenses
Barbwire ^ | March 4, 2015

Posted on 03/04/2015 6:54:44 AM PST by EternalVigilance

Montgomery, AL – In a historic ruling, the Supreme Court of Alabama in a 7-1 decision has affirmed natural marriage and ordered Alabama’s probate judges to immediately stop issuing illegal marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The ruling represents a significant shift of momentum in the same-sex marriage agenda, and is a direct challenge to the orders of U.S. District Court Judge Callie Granade, who in January purported to overturn Alabama’s marriage laws. The ruling of the Alabama Supreme Court offers the most forceful and clearly articulated rebuttal to date of the imaginative arguments for same-sex “marriage” employed by federal courts.

“The ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court is historic, and is one of the most researched and well reasoned opinions on marriage to be issued by any court in the country,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.

The ruling grants in full Liberty Counsel’s emergency mandamus petition. In the petition and in a subsequent brief, Liberty Counsel demanded on behalf of its Alabama clients – Alabama Policy Institute (“API”) and Alabama Citizens Action Program (“ALCAP”) – that Alabama’s probate judges obey Alabama’s Constitution and laws. As a result of this ruling, Alabama’s probate judges must immediately cease issuing illegal same-sex marriage licenses.

Four probate judges answered Liberty Counsel’s petition, arguing that Alabama citizens have no right or interest in preserving natural marriage. The respondents also claimed that API and ALCAP have no standing, and that the Court has no jurisdiction over this case. But the Supreme Court soundly rejected those arguments, concluding that standing and jurisdiction were proper and citing a truckload of precedent. The Court said: “It could not be clearer that the public — the people of Alabama — have an interest in the respondents’ faithful compliance with Alabama’s marriage laws.” Reinforcing the point, the Court added, “It is beyond question that the duty to issue marriage licenses only in accordance with Alabama law is a duty owed to the public for its benefit. The failure to perform that duty damages the framework of law and institutions the people have chosen for themselves.”

The unlawful issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples by Alabama probate judges was the result of federal Judge Callie Granade’s January rulings, when she purported to determine that Alabama’s marriage laws violate the U.S. Constitution. Though she had no power to extend her ruling to the entire state, some activist probate judges across Alabama who were not subject to her ruling took it upon themselves to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, in clear violation of Alabama law.

Today’s Supreme Court ruling, however, not only restores the rule of law in Alabama, but also forcefully challenges and methodically dismantles the opinion of Judge Granade and other judges who have erroneously held that the U.S. Constitution requires states to redefine marriage:

[W]e find that the provisions of Alabama law contemplating the issuance of marriage licenses only to opposite-sex couples do not violate the United States Constitution . . . .

***

[W]hat [Judge Granade] has done is to declare an entirely new concept of “marriage” a fundamental right under the guise of the previously understood meaning of that institution. It is, plainly and simply, circular reasoning—it assumes the conclusion of the matter, i.e., that marriage as newly defined is a fundamental right, in the premise of the question without acknowledging that a change of terms has occurred.

On its way to affirming natural marriage, the Alabama Supreme Court made several key observations about the historical and societal underpinnings of the marriage institution:

“[M]arriage, as a union between one man and one woman, is the fundamental unit of society.” “[M]arriage has always been between members of the opposite sex. The obvious reason for this immutable characteristic is nature. Men and women complement each other biologically and socially.” “[O]ne legitimate interest behind the laws (among others) is recognizing and encouraging the ties between children and their biological parents.” “Government is concerned with public effects, not private wishes. The new definition of marriage centers on the private concerns of adults, while the traditional definition focuses on the benefits to society from the special relationship that exists between a man and a woman, i.e., the effects for care of children, the control of passions, the division of wealth in society, and so on.” “[I]f love was the sine qua non of marriage, then polygamy also would be constitutionally protected . . . .” “[W]hat ultimately is at issue is the entire edifice of family law . . . an edifice that has existed in some form since before the United States was even a country. . . . It is no small thing to wipe away this edifice with a wave of the judicial wand.”

“The legitimacy of the judiciary is undermined when a judge legislates from the bench or usurps the power reserved to the states regarding natural marriage,” said Staver. “This decision of the Alabama Supreme Court is very well reasoned, which is quite rare from today’s courts,” he added. “The decision not only affirms natural marriage but also restores the rule of law,” Staver concluded.

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore took no part in the Court’s decision.

Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.


TOPICS: Breaking News; Government; US: Alabama
KEYWORDS: alabama; homosexualagenda; judiciary; law; marriage; ssm
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To: EternalVigilance
As for me, I will fight to my last breath to save the Union; entire, and intact.

A noble attitude for sure.But tell me...would I be correct in assuming that you've never set foot in New York...Massachusetts...Vermont...Maryland...California...Washington and several other states?

61 posted on 03/06/2015 5:05:52 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Obama;A Low Grade Intellect With Even Lower Morals)
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To: Gay State Conservative

No, you would not be correct.


62 posted on 03/06/2015 5:46:15 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: EternalVigilance
No, you would not be correct.

Then how do you propose to win over...say...Vermont? Or do you simply plan to crush them militarily?

63 posted on 03/06/2015 5:48:58 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Obama;A Low Grade Intellect With Even Lower Morals)
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To: Gay State Conservative

My forebears sacrificed and bled to found and preserve states like New York, and Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, and Maryland, and Virginia, and North Carolina, and West Virginia, and Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Ohio, and Indiana, and Illinois, and Missouri, and Iowa, and Nebraska, and Colorado, and Oregon, and California. I am not going to offend their memory, or my posterity, by willingly giving up one square inch of those states, or of any of the other states of the republic of which they are a part, to those who seek to destroy them.


64 posted on 03/06/2015 6:28:51 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: EternalVigilance

That’s IT! I’m moving to Alabama!


65 posted on 03/06/2015 7:01:03 AM PST by kitkat (STORM HEAVEN WITH PRAYERS FOR OUR COUNTRY)
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To: EternalVigilance
...to those who seek to destroy them.

OK,I hear what you're saying.But,when speaking of states like Vermont you surely meant to say "to those who have succeeded in destroying them".

Vermont....Massachusetts....California (among others) are lost.They're not coming back.No amount of bloodshed...real or symbolic...can save them.That's the sad...no,*tragic*...reality.

66 posted on 03/06/2015 7:02:47 AM PST by Gay State Conservative (Obama;A Low Grade Intellect With Even Lower Morals)
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To: kitkat

That’s great. But be prepared to clean house politically there too. It sounds like the Governor and other elected officials lack the understanding and commitment to moral, constitutional governance that has been demonstrated by their supreme court.


67 posted on 03/06/2015 7:03:48 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: Gay State Conservative

Just because the Republican Party has failed to fulfill its purpose, that does not mean those places are lost.


68 posted on 03/06/2015 7:04:49 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: Gay State Conservative

Conservatism works wherever it’s tried. The problem in those places is that it hasn’t been tried for so very long.


69 posted on 03/06/2015 7:05:36 AM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: WTFOVR

Thanks for sharing that editorial.. I enjoyed reading it.


70 posted on 03/06/2015 12:45:29 PM PST by LowOiL ("Abomination" sure sounds like "ObamaNation" to me.)
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To: EternalVigilance
Gay polygamy in Thailand:



Joke, 29, Bell, 21 and Art, 26, took the plunge on Valentine's Day after exchanging their vows in a fairy-tale ceremony at their home in Uthai Thani Province, Thailand.
71 posted on 03/06/2015 1:42:48 PM PST by Brown Deer (Pray for 0bama. Psalm 109:8)
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To: Brown Deer

Evil.


72 posted on 03/06/2015 1:50:47 PM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: EternalVigilance

“The judicial supremacist lie is destroying the republic. I’ve been preaching that for years now, but for somebody not to see it at this point it’s pretty much got to be willful blindness.”

You have to lack the ability or inclination to follow history, read the text of the law, and pay attention to arguments. in order to know:
1: What the text actually says.
2: What was practiced for the last 200 years.
3: What the Federal Employee in black robes just did with the same text.

Most people never get past #1, although a lot of people have a vage understanding of #2(we were in fact a lot freer in the past) most are actual quite ignorant of everything about our history and even geography. #3 is known only to a minority in its results and of course is useless if you know nothing of #1 much less #2.

Like the Catholic church a thousand years ago few if anyone can/will read the bible or any other history to know the church leaders have been radically changing it to fit their own goals.

Thus the source of our problem is primary historical and textual ignorance.

An ignorance that the self-corrupted ‘legal community’ has made their carriers out of exploiting. Exploiting not only as the sole means to ‘navigate’ the otherwise indecipherable complex linguistic ‘maze’ corrupt’judges’ have created over the years to impose their own will upon the law with the help of theses same lawyers.

Frankly the contradictory and indecipherable complexity of the language they have created alone is itself a form of tyranny particularly given the high price of legal representation and the mere expectation that the common man should have to follow the law to avoid such a need for legal representation in the first place. Even police men are incapable of actually understanding and honestly enforcing the law because of the sheer scale of linguistic corruption imposed upon it by ‘judges’ over the years, and that is their profession!

This broad concept of legal entrapment by way of excessive and contradictory legal linguistic complexity that almost everyone is aware is really just a symptom of the corruption of the court as arrogated over decades if not a century of dishonest of law making. But of course few people were around to remember what the same law meant and thus have no idea the degree to which it has been changed not justly by the Congress or the people, but rather unjustly by the Federal ‘courts’ & lawyers who have paradoxically claimed as part of their profession ‘expertise’ knowlage as to denouce anyone who might question their ever more dangerously expansive power over the people.

The point is there are 3 kinds of obliterates they exploit:
1: Our ignorance of the Republican system
2: Our ignorance of the laws as written.
3: Our Ignorance of the laws as demonstrated(practiced & understood) over time.

Theses are perhaps not ironically the 3 pillars of common law jurist prudence that is now corruptly ignored by the modern Federal employee in a black robes. Instead the only aspect of common law they follow and claim to understand is what the higher court said most recently. In other words not any part of common law jurist prudence but a hierarchy.

We need to expose their corruption, and work to undermined in the minds of the willing the legitimacy of the modern Federal ‘court’ system. While respecting the unjust power of this corrupt system of magistrates we should not hesitate to criticize that corruption and sympathize with its victims. It is the opinion of the people we must arose against the corruption of the Federal ‘courts’ system. and from the people we shall find new ways to resist and restore the power of the people to govern themselves by law rather than men.


73 posted on 03/06/2015 3:20:50 PM PST by Monorprise
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To: Monorprise

-— Like the Catholic church a thousand years ago few if anyone can/will read the bible or any other history to know the church leaders have been radically changing it to fit their own goals. -—

Probably because the printing press wouldn’t be invented for another 450 years.

That’s why a hand copied Bible cost the modern equivalent of $30k., and why Bibles were chained to pulpits.

It’s no coincidence that Luther’s novel doctrine of Sola Scriptura followed shortly after Gutenberg’s invention.


74 posted on 03/06/2015 3:25:08 PM PST by St_Thomas_Aquinas ( Isaiah 22:22, Matthew 16:19, Revelation 3:7)
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To: Monorprise

Jefferson clearly warned us about this very thing.


“Over the Judiciary department, the Constitution [has] deprived [the nation] of their control.” —Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:212

“The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1807. FE 9:68

“The principal [leaders of the political opposition] have retreated into the judiciary as a stronghold, the tenure of which renders it difficult to dislodge them.” —Thomas Jefferson to Joel Barlow, 1801. ME 10:223

“It is a misnomer to call a government republican in which a branch of the supreme power is independent of the nation.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Pleasants, 1821. FE 10:198

“It is not enough that honest men are appointed judges. All know the influence of interest on the mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgment is warped by that influence. To this bias add that of the esprit de corps, of their peculiar maxim and creed that ‘it is the office of a good judge to enlarge his jurisdiction,’ and the absence of responsibility, and how can we expect impartial decision between the General government, of which they are themselves so eminent a part, and an individual state from which they have nothing to hope or fear?” —Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:121

“We have... [required] a vote of two-thirds in one of the Houses for removing a judge; a vote so impossible where any defense is made before men of ordinary prejudices and passions, that our judges are effectually independent of the nation. But this ought not to be. I would not indeed make them dependent on the Executive authority, as they formerly were in England; but I deem it indispensable to the continuance of this government that they should be submitted to some practical and impartial control, and that this, to be impartial, must be compounded of a mixture of state and federal authorities.” —Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:120

“Having found from experience that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scarecrow, [the Judiciary] consider themselves secure for life.” —Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, 1820. ME 15:297

“Impeachment is a farce which will not be tried again.” —Thomas Jefferson to William B. Giles, 1807. ME 11:191

“Contrary to all correct example, [the Federal judiciary] are in the habit of going out of the question before them, to throw an anchor ahead and grapple further hold for future advances of power. They are then in fact the corps of sappers and miners, steadily working to undermine the independent rights of the States and to consolidate all power in the hands of that government in which they have so important a freehold estate.” —Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:121

“The judges... are practicing on the Constitution by inferences, analogies, and sophisms, as they would on an ordinary law. They do not seem aware that it is not even a Constitution formed by a single authority and subject to a single superintendence and control, but that it is a compact of many independent powers, every single one of which claims an equal right to understand it and to require its observance.” —Thomas Jefferson to Edward Livingston, 1825. ME 16:113

“[The] practice of Judge Marshall of travelling out of his case to prescribe what the law would be in a moot case not before the court, is very irregular and very censurable.” —Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:447

“The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.” —Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821. ME 15:326

“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our Constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, ‘boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem.’” —Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, 1820. ME 15:297

“It has long been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression,... that the germ of dissolution of our Federal Government is in the constitution of the Federal Judiciary—an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief over the field of jurisdiction until all shall be usurped from the States and the government be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed.” —Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821. ME 15:331


75 posted on 03/06/2015 3:36:40 PM PST by EternalVigilance
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To: St_Thomas_Aquinas

“Probably because the printing press wouldn’t be invented for another 450 years.

That’s why a hand copied Bible cost the modern equivalent of $30k., and why Bibles were chained to pulpits.

It’s no coincidence that Luther’s novel doctrine of Sola Scriptura followed shortly after Gutenberg’s invention.”

I agree, and today with the power of Mass media, and the internet we have a great advantage in disseminating the nature of their corruption.

Our only problem is the enemy is as skilled and even better funded than we are in selling their own web of lies. But the truth as we have found it can be found in analyzing the self-serving corruption that results from their system of supposed & actions. At the end of the day they are supposing they have the supreme legislative power to redefine the law, rather than simply enforce it on a case by case basis. They demonstrate this power not merely by their disregard of language but inconsistency of even their own application much less the historic application.

The law as written by the people & congress cannot after all be two or more things at two or more different times without a legislative act in between. Thus when they say marriage today is one thing, even thou everyone knew it was something different for thousands of year. The laws of the people have been changed.

When Abortion was illegal one day and made legal again the next, the law has been changed.

When States were free to have regional representation in their Senates just like Washington does, for a hundred year, then Suddenly demanded that the same body be popular representation instead. The law has been changed!

The rules of common law in jurist prudent are not simply follow the higher court, they are keep your rulings consistent not only with the text, but with past practice as well. The truth is when the mere word of a group of men in robes changes the law, we are not living under laws but rather those men. For a true law is not the word or discretion of men who may change their minds in any case. But the unchanging and consistent text applied equally and uniformly to all men in all cases. Thus the reality is, when a court can change the ‘law’ there is not rule of law, but the men of the court.


76 posted on 03/06/2015 4:12:41 PM PST by Monorprise
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To: Monorprise
We live in a new dimension. A place were belief negates physical reality. A land were the thought over rides the reality. Here a mam can marry a man, a cow has human rights, one can kill one’s own offspring if one thinks they are not human, not persons or are just property. A land where if a boy thinks he is a girl, voila it is so. God have mercy on us!
77 posted on 03/07/2015 12:14:03 PM PST by cotton (one way, one truth, the life.)
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To: EternalVigilance

Great article!


78 posted on 03/07/2015 8:46:22 PM PST by rcrngroup
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To: cotton

“We live in a new dimension. A place were belief negates physical reality. A land were the thought over rides the reality. Here a mam can marry a man, a cow has human rights, one can kill one’s own offspring if one thinks they are not human, not persons or are just property. A land where if a boy thinks he is a girl, voila it is so. God have mercy on us!”

When you put it that way, it sounds like the people who buy & promote this stuff are so insane, one questions how they manage to function under the laws of nature until one realizes that they don’t really.


79 posted on 03/08/2015 11:14:46 AM PDT by Monorprise
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