Justices Thomas and Scalia were none too pleased that their colleagues refused to continue a stay on same-sex marriages in Alabama pending the Court’s resolution of the issue later this year:

Yet rather than treat like applicants alike, the Court looks the other way as yet another Federal District Judge casts aside state laws without making any effort to preserve the status quo pending the Court’s resolution of a constitutional question it left open in United States v. Windsor [citation omitted]. This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution of that question. This is not the proper way to discharge our Article III responsibilities.

Sick burn. Anyway, Justices Thomas and Scalia aren’t the only robe-wearing opponents of the decision not to continue the stay. As the venerable SCOTUSBlog reported, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court said a in memo that if any Alabama probate judge issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples:

it would be the responsibility of the Chief Executive Officer of the State of Alabama, Governor Robert Bentley, in whom the Constitution vests “the supreme executive power of this state,”[citation omitted] to ensure the execution of the law.

In other words, nothing at all would happen.

I propose all of the gay couples getting married in Alabama in the wake of the stay’s denial mail a copy of their wedding portrait to Justice Moore, for good measure.

Documents mentioned in this post:

• Memo from Alabama Chief Justice Roy S. Moore to State Probate Judges (PDF)
• Order of the Supreme Court of the United States Denying Stay in the case of Alabama v. Searcy, and Dissent Thereto (PDF)

I’ll just leave this right here…

Apple initially expressed corporate reluctance, but Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell later told Pamela Todd, Alabama’s only openly gay lawmaker, that CEO Tim Cook “would be delighted” to have a bill named after him which would protect LGBTQ Alabama state employees from discrimination.

Cook said when he came out publicly in an essay for Bloomberg Businessweek that while he doesn’t usually like to draw attention to himself,

At the same time, I believe deeply in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ ” I often challenge myself with that question, and I’ve come to realize that my desire for personal privacy has been holding me back from doing something more important.

It may seem like letting someone name a law after you isn’t that profound, but it is. The law will get national and even international attention primarily because of Tim Cook’s name. Without it, the law would have been written about by Alabama press and journalists in surrounding states, and would have been covered by LGBTQ publications.

But this small thing Mr. Cook can do, this simple thing, lends a volume to Pamela Todd’s proposal it may otherwise have lacked. And it’s already worked: I don’t think I’ve ever read a single word about Alabama state law of any kind, despite graduating from law school, becoming a licensed attorney and frequently writing about law in general and LGBTQ legal developments in particular.

At this point the anti-Constitutionalists are trolling themselves. A choice bit from this piece of garbage:

The bill will ensure the federal government gives the same deference to the 33 states that define marriage as the union between one man and one woman as it does to the 17 states that have chosen to recognize same-sex unions.

It doesn’t matter how a state wants to define marriage, whether it’s full of crazy conservatives or mushy liberals. It only matters what the Constitution requires, and that is equal protection under the laws.

All consenting adults with the capacity to validly enter a contract are allowed to marry. Legislating around that fundamental right violates the Constitution.

We’ve been over this.

Mr. Stern’s headline sums it up very well. If you don’t believe it can really be that bad, read the PDF.

It is that bad. Ignorance is one thing, but open hostility like this cannot stand and anyone who supports this bill commits the intellectual equivalent of burning the original Constitution to a pile of ashes.

Let me translate that from fiery liberal anger into constitutional principles:

A law allowing the detrimental differential treatment of a class of persons traditionally subject to invidious discrimination because they belong to that class violates the Equal Protection rights granted by the Constitution as to the federal government in the 5th Amendment and extended as to the States by the 14th Amendment.

Let us quote the Good Document itself:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Gotta love that 14th Amendment. There’s nothing ambiguous in the juxtaposition of the Kansas bill and the Constitution. You can’t deny someone equal protection of the laws. You can’t tell me I’m not allowed in your hotel because I’m a man. Maybe if it’s a country club. But not a hotel. Or a restaurant. Or a state.

The use of freedom of religion as a pathetic attempt to hide animosity and hatred is a supreme act of collective cowardice by the Kansan legislators who vote for this bill.

It is an un-American as it gets. But the good news is, as one ruling after another makes ever-more-clear, you can’t stop history.

And the steady march continues, as Delaware joins their ten predecessors in granting gay couples the basic American right to marry.

The inexorable march of time sees a tenth state grant gay and lesbian people the statutory right to marry.

Those states who have yet to get on board would do well to hurry: you’re quickly running out of time to look like you were ahead of the curve in the common sense of twenty-first century civil rights.