Alabama lawmakers, still angling to win the race to the bottom on LGBT issues, are desperate to shield public officials from having to sign those sinful same-sex marriage licenses.

An Alabama House committee has approved a bill that would replace state-signed marriage licenses with contracts in a bid to free probate judges from signing licenses for gay couples. The House Judiciary committee voted Wednesday for the bill, which passed the Senate in March. [...] Following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that effectively legalized same-sex marriage, some probate judges in the state refused to issue marriage licenses altogether rather than give them to gay couples.

Notice how North Carolina lawmakers ditched that narrow-minded same-sex marriage battle and expanded their circle of bigotry to include everyone in the LGBTQ community with HB2. They’re the real innovators. But not Alabama lawmakers—they're still smarting over last summer's Supreme Court decision.

Alabama pushed the same bill last year, but you know what they say: if at first bigotry doesn't succeed, try try again.