Roy Moore's anti-LGBT sentiments and other extreme-right views are widely known, but a new video commentary by an Alabama political columnist highlights just how hateful Moore is -- and that maybe he thinks he's God.
In the video for AL.com, a website for several of Alabama's largest newspapers, Kyle Whitmire notes the degree of antigay animus displayed by Moore, the former state Supreme Court chief justice now running for U.S. Senate. Whitmire mentions that Moore was removed from the court for good this year for directing state judges to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.
"If you think it's a states' rights issue or about the limitation of government power, think again," Whitmire says of Moore's opposition to marriage equality. "Roy Moore really hates gay people, and it's worth taking a moment to see how much."
The columnist points out that in a 2002 Alabama Supreme Court opinion Moore called homosexuality "abominable, detestable, unmentionable, and too disgusting and well known to require other definition or further details or description."
That comment came in a custody case, in which the court awarded custody to a father who had slapped his children and bugged their phones to record conversations with their mother -- who is a lesbian. In his opinion, Moore asserted that the state must use power to prevent "subversion of children toward this lifestyle, to not encourage a criminal lifestyle."
Moore was kicked off the court once before, for defying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse grounds. The federal court found this a violation of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.
This fact about Moore is well-known, but Whitmire points out something less widely reported: that Moore copyrighted the monument. Moore is also in the habit of autographing Bibles at campaign events, Whitmire says, as if he were the author. "Anyone who will sign their name to a Bible has forgotten who God is," the columnist comments.
Moore and Luther Strange, who was appointed to fill the Senate vacancy created when Jeff Sessions became U.S. attorney general, will face each other in a Republican primary runoff September 26. The winner will go up against Democrat Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor who had also been an aide to Howell Heflin, Alabama's last Democratic U.S. senator, in a special election November 7.
Luther Strange, "certainly knows a lot about corruption," Whitmire notes, a reference to the fact that Strange got the Senate appointment from Gov. Robert Bentley when he, as Alabama attorney general, was supposed to be investigating the governor. Bentley, who Whitmire calls "a geriatric sex fiend," resigned from office shortly thereafter due to a sex scandal.
"But Moore is spiritually corrupt, and that might be even worse," Whitmire continues. "Remember, this is a guy who says that God himself put a boastful, covetous, serial philanderer in the White House by divine providence." That's juxtaposed with images from Donald Trump's infamous Access Hollywood tape and Trump making fun of a reporter's disability. The often-hilarious video is below and well worth viewing in full.
In other Roy Moore news, the Foundation for Moral Law -- of which he was once president, a post now held by his wife, Kayla -- has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the Colorado baker who refused to provide a cake for a same-sex couple's wedding. The brief argues that the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop had the right, under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion, to deny the couple's request.
"The Foundation is proud to stand with Masterpiece and its owner, Jack Phillips," Kayla Moore said in a press release. "He is a sincere Christian who is being faithful to the Word of God."
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission found that Phillips violated the state's antidiscrimination law, and state courts upheld that ruling, leading Phillips to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court will hear his case sometime in its next term, which begins in October.
Friend-of-the-court briefs are documents filed by people and institutions that are not involved in a case but support one side or the other. The federal Department of Justice has also filed a brief supporting Phillips.
Another fact about the Foundation for Moral Law: Its website contains numerous opinion pieces by Roy Moore, along with his "bad poetry," as noted by Whitmire. A poem highlighted in the video is "America the Beautiful," in which Moore denounces what America has become because of abortion and people who "indulge their lusts, when God has said abstain." It's not to be confused with the patriotic song of the same name, which has lyrics by Katharine Lee Bates -- who was, by the way, a lesbian.
