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Gay marriage supporters rally outside courthouse in Birmingham, Ala. The state in involved with the federal courts in a dispute over same-sex unions.

(Associated Press photo)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - Tens of thousands of people jammed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on Sunday to mark the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" confrontation between police and civil rights supporters, an event that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act and ushered in a new era in American history.

There was more than a touch of irony to the fact that the commemoration was held amid a continuing states' rights battle between deeply conservative Alabama and the federal courts over gay marriage.

The controversy started in January, when a decision by a U.S. district court judge struck down Alabama's ban on same-sex unions.

On Feb. 8, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore wrote a letter to the state's probate judges, ordering them to ignore the federal court ruling and to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

No matter that rulings by the federal courts ultimately trump state law. No matter that the Civil War ended 150 years ago. Moore ordered probate judges to stand in front of the chapel door just as surely as Gov. George Wallace blocked the University of Alabama door in an attempt to stop court-ordered desegregation in 1963.

Turning down a request from Alabama officials, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stay the district court's gay marriage decision. That allowed same-sex unions to continue until the U.S. Supreme Court makes what is likely to be its own landmark decision in a separate gay marriage case sometime this spring.

But last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a halt to same-sex marriages in the state, saying that the district court's ruling does not prohibit the probate judges from adhering to state law.

It's a mess.

In its decision, the Alabama court said that the state has always adhered to the traditional definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.

"That fact does not change simply because the new definition of marriage has gained ascendancy in certain quarters of the country," the decision said.

Certain quarters of the country? How about in 36 states and the District of Columbia?

Marriage, the Alabama court said, "has always been between members of the opposite sex."

Well, a lot things were traditionally one way and are now another. Blacks were slaves. Interracial couples were prohibited from marrying. There were Jim Crow laws. Alabama surely remembers those days.

There's always resistance to a "new normal." In the case of same-sex marriage, it's called being on the wrong side of history.

And now Alabama's probate judges, some of whom had no problem issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, are caught between the federal courts and their own state judiciary.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, meanwhile, said that the high court should have stayed out of the Alabama controversy until deciding its own gay marriage case. He may have a point there.

Thomas also said that by getting involved, the high court was giving an indication of how it would rule in its own case, i.e., that the court would find that banning gay marriage is unconstitutional.

Let's hope he's right on that account too.

Massachusetts in 2004 became the first state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. Same-sex unions have been legal in New York since 2011. Western civilization is still chugging along, despite the dire and sometimes hysterical predictions of opponents.

Tradition is no justification for discrimination. It was no excuse for institutionalized racism.

Fifty years later, we have arrived at a new Selma bridge. Sadly, it seems that Alabama and other states won't cross it without a shove from the Supreme Court.