ALABAMA: Governor Tells SCOTUS That Gay Marriages Will "Invite Chaos"

Last night Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley filed a SCOTUS brief in support of Attorney General Luther Strange's demand for a stay extension pending their June ruling. According to Bentley, allowing marriages to commence next week would "invite chaos" should SCOTUS ultimately rule against same-sex marriage. Read the brief at Equality Case Files. Also last night, the winning plaintiffs in Alabama's two marriage equality cases filed SCOTUS briefs against extending the stay. Their briefs are here and here. The stay on Alabama marriage is due to expire on Monday.

Eleventh Circuit Puts Florida & Alabama Appeals On Hold Until SCOTUS Rules

Equality Case Files has the orders.

ALABAMA: AG Files SCOTUS Appeal, Says State Should Not "Regulate Love"

Upon yesterday's stay extension denial by the Eleventh Circuit Court, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange immediately sent them his notice of appeal to SCOTUS. Late last night he filed that appeal, telling SCOTUS that states are not in the business of regulating love:

The interests supported by opposite-sex marriage are, at the very least, rational. States are not in the marriage business “to regulate love.” Instead, state marriage laws link children to their biological parents (and link these biological parents to each other) by imposing a package of privileges and obligations—such as presumptions of paternity—that make less sense in the context of same-sex relationships. It is not irrational or malicious for state laws to reflect an “awareness of the biological reality that couples of the same sex do not have children the same way as couples of opposite sexes.” It is instead the background against which the institution of marriage has developed over the last several thousand years.

Read the full appeal at Equality Case Files.

Alabama Governor Has The Marriage Sadz

"I am disappointed by the 11th Circuit’s decision today. The issue of same sex marriage is a complicated one that involves all levels of government. My request to the 11th Circuit was simply to ask that the stay be held until the Supreme Court can rule once and for all this year or pending the fully briefed 11th Circuit appeal of the issue. I support the Attorney General’s decision to ask the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of the 11 Circuit’s decision." - Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, via press release. BONUS: Today is his birthday.

ALABAMA: State To Appeal To SCOTUS, Plaintiffs Ask For Immediate Marriages

Alabama is already rushing to SCOTUS:

Alabama’s request for a hold on a ruling that struck down the state’s two bans on same-sex marriage has been denied by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Following that ruling, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the Jan. 23 U.S. District Court ruling striking down Alabama’s same-sex marriage bans. “I am disappointed in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court’s decision not to stay the federal district court’s ruling," Strange said in a release. "The confusion that has been created by the District Court’s ruling could linger for months until the U.S. Supreme Court resolves this issue once and for all."

And the plaintiffs have ready asked Judge Granade to lift her stay in advance of its scheduled expiration on Monday. If that happens, marriages could commence immediately.

BREAKING: Eleventh Circuit Court DENIES Stay Extension On Alabama Marriage

Read the ruling.

UPDATE: Lawyers for the plaintiffs say they are filing for an immediate lifting of the stay due to expire on Monday.

"We're very pleased with the 11th Circuit's decision," said David Kennedy, an attorney representing Cari Searcy and Kimberly McKeand, the Mobile couple at the heart of the case. "We don't believe any Alabamian should be treated in an unequal manner or have their rights denied that are guaranteed by U.S. Constitution." Kennedy said they would file a motion this morning asking U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade to lift her stay. A message left with the Alabama attorney general's office was not immediately returned. Alabama is about to become the 37th state where same-sex marriage is legal.

The 37th state after the haters scurry to SCOTUS.

UPDATE II: The Birmingham News is saying that marriages can commence today, but that's not true. Judge Granade must first lift her stay.

ALABAMA: Attorney General Files Response Brief, Says He Doesn't Even Issue Marriage Licenses In The First Place

From today's response brief submitted by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange:

As we explained in the motion to stay, the trial court’s judgment is due to be reversed because: (1) it did not follow binding Supreme Court precedent; (2) it defined the fundamental right to marry as the right to marry anyone of any sex, even though that formulation of the right to marry is not deeply rooted in our history or tradition; and (3) it did not even mention our expert’s testimony that recognizing opposite-sex marriage promotes the state’s interest in linking children to their biological parents—an interest that is not promoted by recognizing same-sex marriages because one or more of the child’s biological parents are necessarily not a party to the marriage.

The plaintiffs have not responded to this showing. They have, notably, not defended the District Court’s reasoning about the supposedly fundamental right of same-sex marriage, which caused the District Court to apply strict scrutiny. Nor have they proposed any other rationale that would justify the District Court’s decision. The plaintiffs in the related Strawser case, Appeal No. 15-10313-A, discuss the merits at more length, and we address those arguments in our reply there. But the main problem for both groups of plaintiffs is the same. They have not answered this question: if marriage is not a union of one man and one woman, then what is it?

These problems of inconsistency and confusion are especially salient in this case. First, the Attorney General is the only defendant to this lawsuit, and he (of course) has no role in the issuance of marriage licenses, adoptions, etc. So it is unclear, as a formal matter, what the district court’s injunction requires of his office or anyone else involved in state or local government. Second, there are other same-sex marriage cases pending in Alabama’s other district courts, including one in which summary judgment has been briefed and pending for several months. Those district court judges are, obviously, not bound by the district court’s judgment in this case and could add to the confusion by issuing contrary decisions at any moment. The plaintiffs cannot whistle past these problems as if they do not exist.

Read the full brief at Equality Case Files. Pending a decision by the Eleventh Circuit, marriages would commence next Monday morning.

Matt Baume: Marriage News Watch

Clip recap:

Marriage could be starting next week in Alabama. Anti-gay officials are saying that they don’t have to let gay couples get married, but their reasoning isn’t exactly what you would call true. Oklahoma’s marriage equality backlash is getting dangerous, with a proposed law that would hand new victims to ex-gay predators. And the National Organization for Marriage thinks they’ll have an impact on the 2016 presidential election.

ALABAMA: Governor's Brief Declares That Same-Sex Marriage "Demeans" Democracy

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley today filed an amicus brief with the Eleventh Circuit Court in support of Attorney General Luther Strange's petition for a stay on same-sex marriage until SCOTUS makes its ruling. Bentley's brief declares that it is "demeaning" to democracy to allow same-sex marriages to occur. Via Equality Case Files:

On a complicated and controversial issue such as this, with no clear warrant inthe Constitution for imposing one State’s conception of marriage on another, the judiciary has a duty not to do so. As the Supreme Court stated last term, the people of the sovereign States have a “fundamental right” that is “held in common,” the right“to speak and debate and learn and then, as a matter of political will, to act through a lawful electoral process.” Schuette v. Coal. to Defend Affirmative Action, 134 S.Ct.1623, 1637 (2014). And “[t]hat process is impeded, not advanced, by court decrees based on the proposition that the public cannot have the requisite repose to discuss certain issues. It is demeaning to the democratic process to presume that the voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds.”

The brief was filed by Al Algricola, the same lawyer who represents Alabama's association of probate judges.

ALABAMA: AG Luther Strange Files Notice Of Appeal To Eleventh Circuit Court

See the notice. The stay on Alabama marriages is presently set to expire on Monday, February 9th. Valentine's Day is that Saturday, so....

FLORIDA: AG Pam Bondi Dodges Questions On Dropping Same-Sex Marriage Appeal

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was sworn in to her second term yesterday after which reporters mobbed her on the steps of the state Capitol Building to grill her about the lifting of the ban on same-sex marriage. Bondi twice said she sends her "best wishes" to newly married couples, but dodged questions about dropping her appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court, merely saying, "We need uniformity."

One reporter asked, "Is gay marriage a loser, politically?" Bondi: "Gay marriage is what 62% of the voters put in our constitution. You heard my oath this morning. It was to uphold the constitution, regardless. I don't look at anything politically. I look at it as doing my job and upholding my office." Bondi ended the interview by appearing to reveal the death of her mother, Patsy Bondi, but I'm not seeing reports of that passing yet. UPDATE: A reader speculates that "I lost my mom" could merely mean that Bondi and her mother had been separated in the crowd.

(Via JMG reader Ed)

FLORIDA: Pam Bondi Concedes Defeat

Via the Miami Herald:

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican who vigorously fought to defend the state's same-sex marriage ban against a barrage of legal challenges, on Monday conceded defeat. "The judge has ruled, and we wish these couples the best,'' said Bondi spokesman Whitney Ray in a statement. For the last several months, Bondi sought extensions of the stay from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, but both turned her down. A day before a gay-marriage ban that has been ruled unconstitutional is lifted in the rest of the state, Miami-Dade County became the first place in Florida to allow same-sex couples to marry on Monday when a judge lifted the stay there. Ray said there has been no decision as to whether Bondi will continue to pursue the appeal before the 11th Circuit.

There may be no "official" decision on dropping the appeal, but legal insiders have been expecting as much for the several days since Bondi's office notified the Eleventh Circuit Court that they would not be issuing a response brief to the plaintiffs' most recent filing. Keep in mind, however, that we've also seen "surrender" fake-outs from the likes of Idaho Gov. Butch Otter.

Bonus sadz from John Stemberger: "There could be an appeal to the 11th Circuit but I'm not sure how successful that would be given the fact that they've kicked it back once. She's done her job, and that's all we could ask of her, and she's done it well."

HomoQuotable - Robert Oscar Lopez

"With unforeseen success has come, unfortunately, a lot of challenges for which I was not prepared. Due to some of these challenges, and in the interest of protecting contributors and correspondents, we have had to take down and archive the 2,000 posts that were published here; we have warehoused them somewhere safe but cannot leave them as open-source resources to the reading public anymore. We will be publishing the most important essays from English Manif as books. Our goal going forward is to ensure that the work we do here is disseminated with proper contextualization and having gone through as careful an editing process as possible. In a nutshell, English Manif is all grown up now. We have to take our work to the next level, which means collecting essays and publishing them as proper books." - Robert Oscar Lopez, taking down his blog two weeks after describing his students as potential "snipers, spies, saboteurs." (Tipped by JMG reader Str8 Grandmother)

RELATED: Earlier this month Lopez filed an amicus brief with the Eleventh Circuit Court in opposition to same-sex marriage in Florida. In his brief Lopez declares that Good As You blogger Jeremy Hooper has been writing to people with claims that Lopez compares "gay parents to slave-owners." Hooper reacts:

Making shit up about me is something that Robert Oscar Lopez and his crew like to do. But this is a brief. This is a legal document. This is designed to sway a court based on what is supposedly evidence that backs the person's stated position. To deliberately lie in this fashion and in this forum, without putting forth one shred of evidence (because there is none), is the height of intellectual negligence. FROM. A. COLLEGE. PROFESSOR, no less!

PREVIOUSLY ON JMG:  In September, Lopez compared the Human Rights Campaign to the Khmer Rouge. Earlier that month Lopez petitioned the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to stop gay marriage in Texas because he used to be a prostitute. In April 2014 Lopez filed an anti-gay amicus brief in support of Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage. In March 2014 Lopez declared that gay men are turning surrogate mothers into breeding slaves. Last year, in addition to appearing on stage at an anti-gay Manif Pour Tous rally in France that was supported by neo-Nazis, Lopez testified against LGBT equality before several state legislatures and he co-signed an anti-gay homocon brief to the Supreme Court in support of DOMA. You really must read the Media Matters take on Lopez' trilogy of gay erotica.

Matt Baume: Marriage News Watch

FLORIDA: Dozens Of Major Corporations File Brief In Support Of Marriage Plaintiffs

Dozens of major corporations have filed an amicus brief with the Eleventh Circuit Court in support of Florida's same-sex marriage plaintiffs. Among the signees: Amazon, AT&T, Bloomberg, CBS, Delta, Deutsche Bank, eBay, Electronic Arts, General Electric, Levi Strauss, Marriott, Oracle, Pfizer, Staples, Symantec, Target, and Viacom. From the brief:

We are located and/or do business in Florida, Georgia, or Alabama, all of which prohibit marriages between couples of the same sex and refuse to recognize existing same-sex marriages. State laws and constitutions denying marriage to gay and lesbian citizens are bad for our businesses. Amici are forced to bear unnecessary costs, complexity, and risk in managing our companies, and we are hampered in our efforts to recruit and retain the most talented workforce possible—all of which places us at a competitive disadvantage. Our success depends upon the welfare and morale of all employees, without distinction. The burden—imposed by state law—of having to administer complicated schemes designed to account for differential treatment of similarly situated employees interferes with our business and creates unnecessary confusion, tension, and ultimately, diminished employee morale. We write to advise the Court of the impact on employers of the disparate treatment mandated by states that refuse to permit or recognize marriages between same-sex couples.

RELATED: Among numerous other groups filing amicus briefs are the NAACP, PFLAG, and a coalition of 16 Florida counties and cities. Many more briefs can be viewed at Equality Case Files.

FLORIDA: ACLU Files SCOTUS Response To Pam Bondi's Stay Extension Demand

From the ACLU Of Florida:

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a response at the United States Supreme Court today stating that the Court should reject Florida’s request for further extension of the stay placed on a federal court’s decision that struck down Florida’s ban on allowing and recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples. The response argued that Florida families suffer harms every day the ban remains in place.

“Governor Scott, his appointees, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s efforts to delay the implementation of the order striking down the marriage ban are as senseless as they are incredibly harmful,” stated ACLU of Florida LGBT rights staff attorney Daniel Tilley. “Every day that the couples we represent and the thousands of families across Florida who are also denied the protections of marriage go without those protections, they are suffering real harm, as Judge Hinkle’s order made plainly clear. We are glad to have had the opportunity to explain to our nation’s highest court why it is time to let love win in Florida, and we are hopeful that the Court will reject Governor Scott and Attorney General Bondi’s increasingly-desperate efforts, just as it has refused all requests to stay rulings striking down discriminatory marriage bans since this October.”

Read the response.

FLORIDA: County Clerks Legal Group Claims Federal Marriage Equality Ruling Applies In Only One County

As we await the SCOTUS decision on yesterday's marriage stay extension demand by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, the legal firm that represents the state's 67 county clerks today declared that the federal ruling that overturned the ban only applies in the county in which it was issued. The firm warns that clerks outside of Washington County risk arrest if they issue any same-sex marriage licenses after (and if) the stay is allowed to expire on January 5th.

Lawyers for the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers said in a statement today that Washington County is the only place named in the federal lawsuit. Clerks in all other counties, according to the association, aren’t bound by U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle’s ruling in August that the gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. In addition, the association said Florida’s same-sex marriage ban enacted by voters in 2008 is unique because clerk employees who issue a marriage license to a gay couple without authorization could face misdemeanor criminal charges. “At this time of uncertainty, the Florida Court Clerks & Comptrollers have been advised by the association to follow the advice of our legal counsel and not issue same-sex marriage licenses until a binding order is issued by a court of proper jurisdiction,” said Kenneth A. Kent, executive director of the clerks association.

Judges in Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties have also ruled against Florida's ban on same-sex marriage, but those cases have been put on hold pending the federal appeal now before the Eleventh Circuit Court.

BREAKING: Florida AG Pam Bondi Asks SCOTUS To Extend Marriage Stay

On December 5th the Eleventh Circuit Court denied Bondi's demand for an indefinite stay on same-sex marriages while they consider her appeal. That stay is due to dissolve on January 5th and today Bondi filed the same stay extension demand with SCOTUS. Justice Clarence Thomas has jurisdiction over the Eleventh Circuit.

UPDATE: Here's the demand.

Matt Baume: Marriage News Watch

Clip recap: "Marriage could be coming to Florida sooner than we expected. Plus, after last week's big win, the Mississippi lawsuit is now on the fast track to an appeal. And Kansas just lost their latest attempt to hold back the start of marriage."

FOTF Has The Florida Sadz