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.
Meanwhile, the admitted lawbreaker Roy Moore walks free.
For fuck’s sake…
i’m so glad we are getting dangerous people like this off the street.
Anne Susan Diprizio’s First Amendments Rights to practice her religion and to express herself as an Ordained Minister were clearly violated.
“Probate Judge Al Booth called the police when Anne Susan Diprizio refused to leave his office”
NO. You’re better than this TPM. From the facts you provided, she was clearly NOT arrested for “offering to perform gay marriage” and you’re not helping by conflating in that manner. When a judge tells you to do something, you fucking do it and when it involves a judge telling you to get out of his office or courtroom or what-not, he can do that. When the police arrive to tell you to do that too, you freekin do it, because they’re authorized to remove you from public property as well. We can tell exactly what happened here: she threw a hissy fit about it being public property and her having every right to be there etc. and the police cuffed her because she wouldn’t obey lawful orders and, probably, booked her on disorderly conduct and some other minor crap so they could remove her from the premises where she was making a scene. While she’ll never get tried for it, trying to turn this into her being arrested for the gay marriage offer as if the police and judge were calling THAT the arrestable criminal offense is deliberately misleading and very unhelpful.
Moreover, this woman is clearly an activist with a chip on her shoulder and HER behavior in trying to manufacture these confrontations is not helpful either. She apparently fancies herself the Rosa Parks of gay marriage. The judge has every authority to set the policies of his office and courtroom and that includes fairly ceasing to perform ALL marriage ceremonies in it. Her deliberate refusal to recognize that and her attempt to make it about gay marriage, when they’ve stopped performing ANY ceremonies in the office, suggests to me she’s looking for press and donations.
Yep. Disorderly conduct is kinda loosely defined and the rap might be easy to beat,but you can’t beat the ride.