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Moore used offensive terms for Native Americans and Asian-Americans at a Sunday rally.
U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore has made yet another incendiary comment, using the racially offensive terms "reds and yellows" in a campaign speech about the divisions in the nation, and condemning the "awful calamity of abortion" and "sodomy" as well.
"We were torn apart in the Civil War -- brother against brother, North against South, party against party," Moore said at a campaign rally Sunday in Florence, Ala., in video shared by The Washington Post (watch below). "What changed? Now we've got blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting. What's going to unite us? What's going to bring us back together? A president? A Congress? No. It's going to be God."
Moore went on to denounce "the awful calamity of abortion, sodomy, the perverse sexual behavior" in America. He said the nation is facing God's wrath, but instead of saying it is being punished for these "sins," he appeared to suggest that these phenomena, along with murders, road rage, political corruption, and "dissipation of our families," are punishments being visited upon the nation for turning away from God. The ultraconservative Christian said that if he is elected to the Senate, he would proclaim a national day of prayer and humiliation, as President Lincoln did during the Civil War.
"Reds" and "yellows" are offensive terms used to describe Native Americans and Asian-Americans, respectively. Moore's use of the words is but the latest outrageous statement from a man who has called homosexuality "abominable, detestable, unmentionable," and said that marriage equality will "literally cause the destruction of our country or lead to the destruction of our country over the long run."
As chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he fought to keep marriage equality from coming to the state, even going so far as to say Alabama officials were not bound by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling for nationwide marriage equality in 2015. Moore was removed from the court for ethics violations related to this fight.
Last week, video surfaced of him at a February event at which he said the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, may have happened because the U.S. had turned away from God and taken steps to "legitimize sodomy" and "legitimize abortion." He also has said, as recently as last year, that he did not believe President Obama was born in the U.S., the Post reports.
And on the campaign trail this year, he has appeared to be uninformed on some issues. He seemed puzzled as to what the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is -- the program was created by Obama to allow undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to remain the country if they meet certain requirements -- and did not appear to know the definition of "right to work" laws, which exempt employees from paying dues to the union representing them, the Post reports.
Nonetheless, Moore is leading opponent Luther Strange in polling as Alabama prepares for a primary runoff to choose its Republican Senate nominee, although the margin has recently narrowed considerably. Strange, formerly the state's attorney general, was appointed to the Senate by Gov. Robert Bentley in February, after Jeff Sessions gave up the Senate seat to become U.S. attorney general. After Bentley resigned in April, Gov. Kay Ivey called a special Senate election for this year. In the Republican primary August 15, Moore and Strange were the top two vote recipients, but neither received a majority, making the runoff necessary.
In the general election December 12, the winner of the runoff will face Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor who received a majority of the vote in the Democratic primary. Alabama has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in more than 20 years, but Jones may be a formidable competitor; one poll has shown him running even with either Republican.
