BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In an interview with radio talk show host Matt Murphy Wednesday morning, Yellowhammer News CEO Cliff Sims proposed a solution for the ongoing debate over whether Alabama probate judges should be required to sign the marriage licenses of same-sex couples or not.
“First of all, marriages are not supposed to be a government thing anyway” Sims said, “Conservatives, in a lot of ways, lost this issue when you got the government involved in the first place. So now we have probate judges in the state of Alabama who are going to be put in a position where they’re going to have to decide… ‘Am I going to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples?’”
Sims mentioned that there is a small, but significant difference in the way Alabama’s laws pertaining to probate judges and marriage are written relative to some other states.
“(T)he law in the state of Alabama says ‘Probate judges ‘may’ issue marriage licenses… It does not say ‘shall issue.’ So you’re going to see, I think, a lot of probate judges, or at least some around the state say, ‘I’m just not going to issue marriage licenses at all.’”
So what would a state that no longer signs marriage licenses look like? Sims believes it comes down to the state simply honoring a contract between two people, with no need for further government interference.
Sims proposes that if two people want to get married, they simply have a minister sign a marriage certificate that is then filed with the county clerk. “If there’s any legal reason you’d need to show your marriage license,” he said, “whether it’s for insurance things, or just different reasons why you would normally right now show your marriage license, a marriage certificate would replace that.”
“But that takes this out of the realm of government. The probate judges no longer have to decide whether… to go against their sincerely held beliefs and sign a marriage license for a same-sex couple. It gets the government out of it all together.”
“The bottom line,” Sims said, “is that the Alabama legislature needs to pass a law getting government out of the marriage business.”
Murphy agreed with Sims, adding he “predicted that that’s what some states would start doing months ago when we started seeing some of these court rulings come down and breaking in the same-sex marriage direction.”
The entire interview can be heard here, the segment on same-sex marriage begins right at the 30-minute mark.
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
