Modest victories in a difficult session challenges remain Legislative Update

Gay rights advocate Vin Testa waves a rainbow flag in front of the Supreme Court at sun up in Washington, Wednesday, June 26, 2013.

"Today this Court by order dismisses all pending motions and petitions and issues the certificate of judgment in this case".

Alabama began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the marriages from beginning in the conservative Southern state.

Today, the nine justices of the Alabama Supreme Court dismissed the suit with a one-page order and 170 page opinion, in which Chief Justice Roy Moore, a long standing opponent of marriage equality maintained his opposition to marriage equality, despite the dismissal of the lawsuit.

Justices from the state's highest court were considering a challenge which hoped to block same-sex marriage there.

But Moore's colleague, Justice Greg Shaw, disagrees and takes Moore to task in his written opinion: 'If a judge finds that he or she can not abide by a controlling decision of a higher court, then that judge should resign from office.

Randall Marshall, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, told the AP that most Alabama counties are already issuing same-sex marriage licenses and "I don't think we will see any change going forward".

Eric Johnston, an attorney for the API, said after the ruling that the opinion "effectively ends the case".

Subsequent lawsuits ended up in the state Supreme Court, culminating in Friday's decision.

Quoting everything from past court rulings to the Bible and the 1974 song "Feelings", the chief justice called the court's ruling "immoral, unconstitutional and tyrannical".

'The Supremacy Clause, quite obviously, by this chain of reasoning, does not give the United States Supreme Court or any other agency of the federal government the authority to make its every declaration by that very fact the supreme law of the land, ' Moore writes.

The justices' writings revealed what seemed to be deep splits within the court.