Moores the Pity

Do you remember Roy Moore, the Teflon judge from the State of Alabama? You know -- the judge who likes to substitute his Christian religion for the law of the land; who harbors no respect whatsoever for the United States Constitution; who disobeys the federal judiciary, and answers only to God. It’s a pity.

Well, he’s at it again. He just won’t go away quietly.  As Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court back in 2003 he stubbornly refused to remove a massive granite Ten Commandments monument centerpiece from the Alabama Judicial Building after a federal judge ordered him to do it.

After all, he had commissioned the monument himself and he was not about to take orders from a federal judge who considers the First Amendment Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution and "obedience of a court order superior to all other concerns, even the suppression of belief in the sovereignty of God,” contended Moore.

That bit of judicial malfeasance got him booted off the Alabama Supreme Court by none other than his own state’s Court of the Judiciary. They unanimously removed him from his post as Chief Justice.  

Undeterred, Moore sought the Republican nomination for Alabama governor in 2006 but lost in the primary to the incumbent by a 2 to 1 margin. He ran for governor again in 2009 and lost in the primary a second time having received only 19% of the vote.  In 2011 he got the idea to run for President of the United States as a Republican.

Religious extremists are drawn to the GOP like moths to a flame. Fortunately for the rest of us his candidacy quickly went down in flames. Then by some miracle of miracles he won an election to reclaim his former job as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. The people of Alabama seem to love their religious extremists. They want their justices to follow the word of God.

And that’s exactly what Judge Moore is doing once again. This time he’s refusing to abide by a federal court judge who ordered Alabama county probate judges to issue marriage licenses to gays. Moore has ordered the probate judges to ignore the federal court decision and continue to deny marriage licenses to gays.

Apparently Judge Moore thinks that the Alabama state constitution and his Holy Bible trumps the United States Constitution and federal law. If I remember correctly, that’s what Alabama governor George Wallace was thinking back in the 1960’s when he blocked the door of a school house to entry by a black student in defiance of the federal courts that declared racial discrimination unconstitutional.

Moore is going to lose his religious extremist battle again.

Moores the pity.