On Tuesday night, Alabama's Supreme Court ordered state officials to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, contradicting an earlier ruling by a federal judge, The New York Times reports.

On the eve of the first legal gay marriages in Alabama, the state's chief justice, Roy S. Moore, issued an order to the state's probate judges to not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A federal judge struck down Alabama's ban on and constitutional amendment against gay marriage last month.

A billboard of mysterious provenance has gone up along Interstate 59 near Birmingham that simply declares, "DIVERSITY MEANS ¶ Chasing Down The ¶ Last White Person ¶ #white genocide."

A Mobile, Ala., mom says school officials forced her daughter to sign a contract promising not to commit suicide or harm others after the kindergartner "drew something that resembled a gun," then pointed a crayon at another kid and said "pew, pew!"

In a series of recent sermons, a pastor at an Alabama Baptist church confessed that he slept with with several members of his congregation without disclosing that he has AIDS.

In 2010, a teacher's aide carried out a plan to use a special needs student—a 14-year-old girl—as rape "bait" to "catch" a male student who had a history of sexual violence. More details in the case against Sparkman Middle School administrators were revealed today by The Huntsville Times, and they are gruesome.

An unnamed former UPS employee who was recently fired allegedly shot and killed two people, then himself, at a UPS warehouse in Inglenook, Alabama, this morning. The names of the victims are being withheld pending notification of their families, CNN reports.

It took an Alabama family five hours to wrestle a 15-foot-long alligator from a swamp in Camden, Ala. over the weekend—the largest legal alligator killing by an Alabama hunter ever. After breaking a winch used to weigh gator catches, Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Biologists used a backhoe to lift the gator's body, which came in at 1,011.5 pounds.

It's sorority rush week at the University of Alabama, and over 2,250 girls—the most to ever rush at Alabama or any school in the country—are currently marching from house to house, grit-smiling their way through small talk and idiotic skits in the hopes of becoming Chi Os or KDs. This is just one year after the student paper revealed that these all-white organizations purposely blocked black women from membership well into the 21st century.

A federal judge ruled today that Alabama's abortion clinic law is unconstitutional. The law, passed last year, mandates that abortion doctors have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, and it would have closed three of the state's five abortion clinics. The law never went into effect, so the clinics have stayed open.

Mo Brooks has been a congressman ever since 2011, after the then-56-year-old was named one of the Republican National Committee's "Young Guns." He's one of the House's most conservative members. Also, he believes immigration is "part of a war on whites" in America, according to a radio interview today.

Christine Saunders, 45, was arrested by police in Dekalb County, Ala. after she drunkenly stole a horse and rode it to a nearby store to steal merchandise. Police found the horse tied up outside with three cans of Keystone Light inside a plastic Walmart bag tied to its saddle horn.

Nineteen-year-old Marissa Williams was spending too much time on Facebook, so her aunt decided to play a trick on her.

Meet Pig. Pig the dog of Birmingham, Alabama. She was the big new star of Do Dah Day. And y'all know how B'ham is about its Do Dah Day dogs, bless their hearts. Pig is kinda screwed-up, aesthetically, which of course just deepens the Five Tuesdays In Heaven With Marley and Me narrative potential, fulfilled here by the Birmingham News' Joey Kennedy:

Pity the youth ministry. It's a real struggle recruiting kids to your cause. You know who else struggled to recruit the young people? Life Savers Ministries of Opelika, Alabama, sure does.

Are you from Talladega? Do you like guns? But I repeat myself. The point is: Your conservative state representative likes guns. A lot. He's a big fan of big guns. With big barbecue smokers inside of them. Now, who are you voting for in November?

The Washington Post's Kathleen Parker congratulates herself this morning for having the courage to "go, tippy toe" into "the race fray":

Last summer, the University of Alabama campus was rocked by allegations that the fabled Greek scene was racist. Well, not allegations: The school's all-white sororities rejected two women because they weren't white. The school's student Senate had a chance to fix things. But last week, they said "fuck it."

A conservative Alabama state senator who may attempt a jump up to Congress used a newspaper interview this weekend to hail McCarthyism and assail a bevy of popular books and authors that he thinks are too subversive to teach to children.

A key committee in Alabama's House of Representatives has pushed through a bill requiring teachers and students at all of the state's public schools to spend 15 minutes every morning in Christian prayer, even though a majority of legislators present say they opposed the measure.