An Alabama woman was arrested on Tuesday after she offered to perform a same-sex marriage inside the Autauga County probate judge’s office, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
After a gay couple received their marriage license from the probate judge’s office, Anne Susan Diprizio, who says she is an ordained minister, offered to conduct a marriage ceremony right there.
The probate judge’s office had stopped allowing ceremonies in the office, a move that was unrelated to a court’s recent decision to strike down the state’s ban on gay marriage, according to the county’s probate judge, Al Booth.
Courtney Cannon and Morgan Plunkett, the couple Diprizio offered to marry, said they hadn’t realized the probate judge had stopped allowing marriage ceremonies.
Probate Judge Al Booth called the police when Anne Susan Diprizio refused to leave his office, Dave Hill, chief deputy of the Autauga County Sheriff’s Office, told the Advertiser.
When the police arrived, they asked Diprizio to leave numerous times and threatened to arrest her, but she refused. She was then arrested and held on a $1,000 bond, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
Diprizio was later released. She immediately went back to the probate judge’s office.
“I asked to speak with Judge Booth but he wouldn’t see me,” she told the Montgomery Advertiser. “I wanted to let him know that I will be back. They charged my with disorderly conduct, which I disagree with, I was not disorderly, I was very respectful.”
Diprizio promised to return to the probate judge’s office.
“I told him I wasn’t going to leave on my own volition and I was very respectful. These are intimidation tactics and we have the federal government on our side. It’s bad for Judge Booth because he is on the wrong side of history,” she said.
