MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Alabama's chief justice built his career on defiance: In 2003, Roy Moore was removed from the bench for defying a federal court order to remove a boulder-sized Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse.
On Monday, as Alabama became the 37th state where gays can legally wed, Moore took a defiant stand again, using the kind of states' rights language used during the Civil War and again during the civil rights movement.
He argued that a federal judge's Jan. 23 ruling striking down the Bible Belt state's gay-marriage ban was an illegal intrusion on the state's sovereignty. And he demanded Alabama's probate judges not issue any marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
"I am the chief administrative officer. It's my duty to speak up when I see the jurisdiction of our courts being intruded by unlawful federal authority," the 67-year-old chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court said in an interview Monday.
His stand did not succeed in stopping gay couples from tying the knot. And it brought forth another round of criticism of Moore.
Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a major civil rights organization, branded Moore the "Ayatollah of Alabama."
Moore's office in the Alabama judicial building is down the street from the Alabama Capitol, where in 1963 Gov. George Wallace promised "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" and vowed to fight what he portrayed as the tyranny of the federal government.
"Moore is using the religion issue to further his political career, just as Wallace used the race issue to further his," Cohen said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a judicial complaint against Moore accusing him of trying to incite chaos at the probate courts.
On Monday, a few counties refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses or shut down their licensing operations altogether, citing confusion about what they should do.
But gay couples got married at county courthouses in Birmingham and Montgomery.
In Birmingham, the Jefferson County Probate Office said it had issued more than 250 licenses to same-sex couples by midday, with people still arriving. Only three opposite-sex couples had received licenses.
Some of the gay couples who had been lined up for hours exited courthouses to applause, delighted by the opportunity to exchange vows.
"I figured that we would be that last ones - I mean, they would drag Alabama kicking and screaming to equality," said Laura Bush, who married Dee Bush in a park outside the courthouse in Birmingham.