Just when I think Southern legislators and judges can’t make themselves look any more stupid, someone comes along to prove me wrong. In this case it’s the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore. You probably remember that a judge refused to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom wall and also had a pre-session prayer every day. That was Moore. He lost the prayer issue after the state (at the behest of the ACLU and others) filed a lawsuit, but somehow the Ten Commandments remained.
Later, as Chief Justice (an elected position, and Moore is, of course, a Republican), he had a large stone Ten Commandments monument erected in the rotunda of the Supreme Court building in 2001. He again faced lawsuits over violating the First Amendment, lost in a series of appeals, but vowed to keep the monument anyway. (That, by the way, is an important judge refusing to adhere to the law.) The other judges overruled him, and the monument was removed in 2004. Here’s the monument before it was deep-sixed:
Moore also tried to uphold the antiquated Alabama statute against homosexual behavior. He lost that one when the U.S. Supreme Court declared such statutes illegal. In 2003, Moore was removed from office for his religiously-motivated intransigence, but it’s a testimony to the right-winginess of Alabama that he was again re-elected Chief Justice in 2012.
And now he’s back in the news, spreading his religious fervor. According to The Raw Story, Moore, in a recent speech, declared that the First Amendment applied (get this) only to Christians (see video below)!
Speaking at the Pastor for Life Luncheon, which was sponsored by Pro-Life Mississippi, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us.
“They didn’t bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship,” he continued. “Let’s get real, let’s go back and learn our history. Let’s stop playing games.”
He then noted that he loves talking to lawyers, because he is a lawyer who went to “a secular law school,” so he knows that “in the law, [talking about God] just isn’t politically correct.” He claimed that this is why America has “lost its way,” and that he would be publishing a pamphlet “this week, maybe next” that contained copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, thereby proving that all the people “who found this nation — black, white, all people, all religions, all faiths” knew that America was “about God.”
Chief Justice Moore later defined “life” via Blackstone’s Law — a book that American lawyers have “sadly forgotten” — as beginning when “the baby kicks.” “Today,” he said, “our courts say it’s not alive ’til the head comes out.”
“Now,” he continued, “if technology’s supposed to increase our knowledge, how did we become so stupid?” Discussing Thomas Jefferson’s use of “life” in the Declaration of Independence, he said that “when [Jefferson] put ‘life’ in there, it was in the womb — we know it begins at conception. Why aren’t we going the right way instead of the wrong way?”
He later said the “pursuit of happiness” meant following God’s law, because “you can’t be happy unless you follow God’s law, and if you follow God’s law, you can’t help but be happy.”
“It’s all about God,” he continued. “We’ve made ‘life’ a decision taken by man,” he said, and “taken ‘liberty,’ and converted it to ‘licentiousness. We’ve taken ‘pursuit of happiness,’ and reduced it to materialism.”
What a litany of fail!
I’m appalled that such a man can mouth such idiocy. And I’m even more appalled that Alabamans, knowing his views and actions, chose to re-elect him. Of course the state harbors sensible citizens (I know a few), but, sweet Ceiling Cat, they should get the hell out of there and let the state secede!
Now if the First Amendment (freedom of speech and of religion) applies only to Christians, then it has no purpose at all, for nobody else is given those freedoms. What does it mean if only one religion has the right to proselytize and to speak without censorship? One might as well declare Alabama—and, if Moore had his way, the U.S.—a theocracy. He should be removed from office again, simply on the grounds that he openly opposes the U.S. Constitution.
Here’s a report showing the loon spouting his stuff:
