A gay couple who are both devoted alumni of the University of Alabama have scrapped their plans to bequeath their multimillion dollar estate to the school. Elliott Mitchell and Clark West, who donated $1 million to the school a decade ago, say they can’t support a state institution while a same-sex marriage ban remains in place.
A federal judge recently affirmed that Alabama’s ban on gay marriage—like every other ban on gay marriage—is unconstitutional, but some local judges are still declining to issue marriage licenses. The state’s Supreme Court has insisted the ban is constitutional.
In an interview with Al.com, which we saw via Raw Story, Mitchell and West said they had planned to give their estate, worth an estimated $15 million to $18 million, to Bama when they both die. A few years ago, they told AL, they’d reached out to the university about creating a community outreach center partly for LGBT students and got “little response.” In 2013, they say, they wrote a letter to Bama president Judy Bonner and the school’s Board of Trustees explaining that they were withdrawing their estate bequest.
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