Contact: Martha Till, 334-262-1245

MONTGOMERY, Ala., March 12, 2015 /Christian Newswire/ -- In a Montgomery case involving same-sex marriage, U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins Tuesday issued an order dismissing Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley as a defendant. Judge Watkins noted that probate judges are under the judicial rather than executive branch of state government, and therefore Gov. Bentley has no stake or interest in the outcome. This, after the Governor's office oversaw the change of Alabama marriage licenses to read "spouse" and "spouse" replacing the traditional titles of "husband" and "wife" despite a clarifying memorandum of law from the state's Chief Justice. The other defendants, including Ms. Pat Fancher who is represented by the Foundation for Moral Law, remain parties to the lawsuit.

Judge Watkins also stated in his order that he and the Middle District are not bound by the order of Southern District Judge Callie Granade which held that Alabama's Sanctity of Marriage Amendment is unconstitutional; a position that the Foundation has maintained throughout the debate and one which the Alabama Supreme Court in its recent 7-1 opinion also agrees with.

And while national attention is focused on Alabama's standoff between Judge Granade and the State Supreme Court, the Montgomery-based Foundation for Moral Law has taken the battle into distant territory -- South Dakota, to be exact.

As in Alabama, South Dakota voters in 2006 amended their state constitution to define marriage as a union of a man and a woman. As in Alabama, a federal judge ruled the South Dakota amendment unconstitutional. As in Alabama, the Attorney General appealed the ruling to the Circuit Court of Appeals. And the Montgomery-based Foundation for Moral Law has come to South Dakota's defense.

The Foundation argues in its amicus brief that the Constitution delegates no power over marriage to the federal government, and therefore the Tenth Amendment reserves that power to the states. Contending that the people, not the federal courts, should make marriage laws, the Foundation quoted last week's Alabama Supreme Court decision: "It is the people themselves, not the government, who must go about the business of working, playing, worshiping, and raising children in whatever society, whatever culture, whatever community is facilitated by the framework of laws that these same people, directly and through their representatives, choose for themselves."

Foundation President Kayla Moore stated, "The people of South Dakota, like the people of Alabama, have a God-given right to enact their own marriage laws without interference from unelected federal judges. The Foundation will defend that right wherever it is threatened."