Decision overturning Alabama’s same-sex marriage ban a victory for families, children of same-sex couples

A federal judge’s ruling striking down Alabama’s same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional will provide greater stability to the lives of same-sex couples and their children, but more work remains to eliminate anti-LGBT discrimination in the state, the Southern Poverty Law Center said today.

The judge in Mobile, Alabama, issued the ruling today in a case brought by two women seeking to have their marriage from California recognized. Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand needed the recognition so that both women could be recognized as legal parents of the child they conceived with the help of a sperm donor. 

“This historic ruling is a giant step toward full equality for LGBT people in Alabama and does not harm anyone,” said David Dinielli, deputy legal director for the SPLC’s LGBT Rights Project. “It is a victory for Alabama families and the children of same-sex couples whose lives will have more stability and certainty now that they are afforded the same rights and privileges as other married couples.”

Alabama’s Marriage Protection Act, a law banning the recognition of same-sex marriages from other states, and the Sanctity of Marriage Amendment, which elevated the ban into the state’s constitution, prevented the recognition. 

The same ban is at the center of an SPLC lawsuit filed in December 2013 on behalf of Paul Hard, an Alabama man who had married in Massachusetts and afterward lost his husband, David Fancher, to an automobile crash. 

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