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From left to right, Kim McKeand and Cary Searcy stand next to attorneys Christine Hernandez and David Kennedy in Mobile, Ala., on Wednesday, May 7, 2014. Searcy and McKeand are challenging Alabama's ban on same-sex marriage. On Friday, Oct. 17, 2014, the state's lawyers asked a judge to throw their suit out. (Brendan Kirby/bkirby@al.com)

MOBILE, Alabama - All things being equal, the Alabama Attorney General's Office argued Friday in a case challenging the state's ban on same-sex marriage, children are better off with a father and a mother.

The case, one of three pending in Alabama's federal courts, seeks to force the state to recognize a California marriage between two Mobile women so that the non-biological parent can legally adopt the boy they have raised from birth.

Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand argue that state law strips the boy of one of his parents.

"But the state has not severed a tie between (the boy) and a biological parent," the state's written argument states in support of its request that the lawsuit be thrown out. "Plaintiffs' real complaint seems to be that the law does not permit Searcy to adopt (the boy), but they have not challenged Alabama's adoption laws directly."

David Kennedy, a lawyer for McKeand and Searcy, said he had not yet had a chance to review the state's arguments. The plaintiffs will get a chance to respond in writing.

U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade will rule in the matter, but an appeal is virtually guaranteed regardless of her decision. The U.S. Supreme Court surprised many observers this month by deciding not to hear an appeal of lower court rulings striking down same-sex marriage laws. That means it is possible that the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will have the final say on the Alabama law.

But Kennedy said he expects the high court at some point to step in.

"I think the Supreme Court just said, 'We're going to sit it out this time and let them percolate for a while,'" he said. "They're going to be the final arbiter, but they want everyone to have their say first."

State attacks 'revisionist' marriage definition

The formal defense offered by the Attorney General's Office is similar to arguments that the state's lawyers raised last month in a same-sex marriage case pending in Montgomery's federal court. But it specifically addresses adoption issues not part of the Montgomery proceedings.

In a brief that quotes President Barack Obama and a New Orleans federal judge who broke long string of pro-gay marriage rulings by upholding Louisiana's ban, the state's lawyers argue that the court would have to find that all fathers and mothers are "fungible" for any other adult in order to strike down the Alabama's law.

"In other words, a redefinition imposed by a Court would rest on and enshrine into law the premise that biological parents are optional, and that no sensible, unbigoted person could think otherwise," the brief states.

The brief calls arguments in favor of same-sex marriage "revisionist," based on the emotional bonds between married partners. If that is all marriage were about, the Attorney General's Office argues, then the state would have no interest in marriage at all.

Instead, the brief maintains, the state has a legitimate interest in promoting relationships that best serve children - unions between biological mothers and fathers. If emotional bonds trumped that, the state agues, it would have no defense against two siblings who wanted to marry or polygamists.

"If marriage is about the intimacy of adults, on what grounds can it be limited to two partners?" the brief states.

The brief also takes aim at the logic that judges across the country have employed in striking down same-sex marriage bans. Those rulings are based on the high court's reasoning in a ruling last year striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act.

But the brief notes that the court's ruling in that case, which focused on federal benefits to same-sex couples who married in states that permit those unions, did not strike down any state laws. In the absence of such a finding, the brief argues, the controlling precedent remains a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that same-sex couples have no right to marry under the 14th Amendment.

The brief also notes that a 1967 Supreme Court case striking down Virginia's ban on interracial marriage - which proponents of same-sex marriage often cite - did not suggest that the state could not limit marriage to a man and a woman.

The state's lawyers wrote that they do not expect a rash of divorces to result from same-sex marriage but argued that permitting those unions could gradually weaken the institution because "over time, the law will send a message that it just isn't that important for fathers to stick around."

Other arguments

Here is a look at other defense raised by the state:

The state has a legitimate interest in protecting the ties between children and their biological parents and other blood relatives: "The law encourages a man who fathers a child to marry the child's mother, stay married to her, and contribute to the upbringing of the child."

Animus against gays and lesbians "could not possibly be the source of the definition of marriage" in state law because that definition bans other potential forms of marriage and long predates the same-sex marriage movement.

Many studies show that children do best in education achievement, emotional health and child and adult behavior when brought up in intact homes.

The Full Faith and Credit Clause, which requires states to recognize contracts executed in other states, does not apply to same-sex marriage because the exception created by DOMA remains intact even after last year's Supreme Court ruling.

Striking down the same-sex marriage ban would damage the credibility of the courts and require them to determine what is morally correct.

"California, where McKeand and Searcy received their marriage license, uses marriage to promote quite different values," the document states. "A single unelected judge in California purported to do just what we argue this Court should not, and 'found' that one definition was morally superior to another."

These are issues best left to the political arena, the brief argues. "However it ends,

the democratic process should be allowed to play out," it states.