Alabama has three challenges to its voter-approved marriage law, stating marriage is between a man and a woman. The lawsuits have been filed in each of the state’s three federal court districts, but judges have yet to rule. The state is defending the current law.
The first challenge came in mid-February when Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery sued the state on behalf of Paul Hard, a Montgomery resident. Hard is a graduate of the University of Mobile and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and reportedly a former Baptist preacher.
Claiming the estate
The suit is in response to the way Hard was treated following the death of his “husband,” David Fancher, who died following a car accident in 2011. Hard wants to claim the estate of Fancher and seek the proceeds in a wrongful death case as well as have “married” listed on Fancher’s death certificate, according to media reports.
According to The Anniston Star, Hard was initially denied by hospital officials any information and the chance to see Fancher after the accident on Interstate 65 in Autauga County on Aug. 1, 2011. Hard and Fancher were “married” in Cape Cod, Mass., for less than three months before the accident.
With this case the SPLC seeks to overturn the state’s Marriage Protection Act, a 1998 law that bans the recognition of same-sex “marriages” from other states, and the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, which put this ban in the constitution in 2006.
A second lawsuit was filed in May by a lesbian couple who want their marriage recognized so they can both be legal parents of the son of one of the women.
The third lawsuit was filed in June by a lesbian couple in Birmingham who want their Massachusetts-performed “marriage” to be recognized in Alabama.
Wendy Brooks Crew, attorney for the Birmingham couple, said, “Your marriage status shouldn’t change when you cross state lines.”
Attorney General Luther Strange said, “I will vigorously defend the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. That has been the definition of marriage for the history of western civilization.”
Seeking to overturn
And with the Oct. 6 Supreme Court decision (see story, this page) not to deal with the same-sex “marriage” issue — leaving it up to the lower state and federal courts to decide — proponents of gay “marriage” are beefing up their efforts to overturn the state’s ban.
Alabama’s chapter of the Humans Rights Campaign (HRC) — an organization that works on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals — said the decision was “joyous.”
But HRC stated that “LGBT Alabamians still lack basic legal protections.”
(Compiled from wire services)
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