What was that line from Jaws 2? He’s baaack…And this time, he’s being supported by ex-White House eminence grise Steve Bannon.
Roy Moore is very likely to be the next Senator from Alabama. He’s currently in a special election run-off to replace former Senator and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions, as most people who follow politics know, has a well-documented history of racial insensitivity (at least); Moore, on the other hand, is a flat-out crazy theocrat.
Back in 2016, I wrote about Moore, who was then on the Alabama Supreme Court, after he ordered Alabama officials to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage.
For those of you who’ve been vacationing on the moon, Moore—who has long been a religious zealot with delusions of grandeur—is the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, a position he regained after being removed for defying federal law and several court orders by erecting a five-ton replica of the Ten Commandments at the door to the Alabama courthouse. Most recently, Judge Moore issued an administrative order declaring that “Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage licenses” to same-sex couples. The Supreme Court’s June Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage involved a case from a different federal circuit, so it does not apply in Alabama, Moore argues. Legal experts say that is a patently wrong interpretation of American law.
Patently wrong indeed! Law students who took such a position would never pass a bar exam.
Read my lips, “Judge.” If you don’t like gay people, fine. Don’t invite them over for dinner. If you disapprove of same-sex marriage, don’t have one. If your version of God hates homosexuals, feel free to pray for their descent into the fiery pits (or whatever hell you people believe in).
But no matter how fervent your belief, no matter how wedded you are to your animus, you don’t get to overrule the Supreme Court. If you are incapable of following and applying the law, you need to be impeached or otherwise removed from a position that allows you to affect other people.
As the quoted language notes, the flap over same-sex marriage (and ethical Judicial behavior) wasn’t the first time Moore had insisted that his version of Christianity should take precedence over the Constitution and the rule of law.
Back in 2001, Moore, at the time the elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court (a powerful argument against judicial elections), placed a 5,280-pound granite monument in the rotunda of Alabama’s Judicial Building in Montgomery. He had ordered the monument without the knowledge of the other justices on the court.
The monument depicted the Bible, open to two pages on which the stonemason had carved the King James version of the Ten Commandments. A private evangelical group, Coral Ridge Ministries, paid for it.
A Montgomery attorney sued to have the monument removed, and–predictably–Moore lost both at trial and on appeal. He was subsequently removed from the Court, but ran for his old seat in a subsequent election, and won. His refusal to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling in the same-sex marriage case was pretty convincing evidence that he hadn’t moderated his views, or his willingness to ignore laws inconsistent with his version of Biblical Truth.
Now he wants to represent Alabama in the United States Senate, and he is currently leading in the polls–despite (among other things) recently publicly reaffirming his “personal belief” that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.
Just what America needs: another demented zealot determined to make America Godly (i.e., white, straight and Christian) Again.
Imagine a Pence – Moore ticket.
I was ready to leave some snarky comment about Moore, but Anthony’s comment about a Pence-Moore ticket scared the sh** out of me. The frightening thing is, those two would probably win no matter the popular vote.
What I don’t get is how Moore was able to run for Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court a second time (after being removed due to his willful violation of a federal court order). That should have been a disqualifying act under Alabama laws, but those laws must not include such a provision.
The dilemma is how do we help those who would be inclined to support Christian theocracy understand the error of their thinking? The Christian right has its whole network of publishers, TV evangelists, and “pastors” who are gifted persuaders hammering the message to the flock every weekend and every day in between.
I really worry that we are headed toward a time when the theocrats will win. They are getting people elected to school boards and other state-level offices, enacting laws and policies that favor private, religious schools where civics (and civic literacy) are paid lip service. How do we reach those folks to provide them with an alternative point of view?
There are days where, but for the hurricanes, Costa Rica seems like the perfect place to end up.
The Republicans are succeeding in these areas because they are united…united in their anti-almost everything so they are a rather cohesive group, their foundation based on hatred.
The Democratic party is still separated into individual pro-specific/individual groups but not united in their efforts to rid the government of those of the Roy Moore ilk.
There is strength in numbers and those against us are those operating from levels of hate and calling themselves “Christians” to appear to be on the right – correct – side to save the country.
As Theresa pointed out yesterday; the victims of Harvey and the catastrophic floods do not ask if their rescuers are transgenders, they reach out to the saving hand of those endangering their own lives to save PEOPLE. Neither do they ask the rescuers or the rescuers ask the victims their sexual nature, their religion or their political affiliation. Can the Democratic party pull itself together to do the same; understanding we are not all going to agree regarding whose civil and human rights we are protecting. The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference and the Democratic party appears to be indifferent to our needs, putting people like Roy Moore and Jeff Sessions, led by Trump and Pence, in control.
IMO Moore would be the perfect senator for Alabama and what that state represents. Would he vote be any different than Sessions? Do people on this blog really think that Alabama is going to wake up, smell the coffee, and enter the twenty-first century? It is still 1862 down there, and by golly they are intent on keeping it that way.
Personally, I am waiting for Pat Robertson to tell me why God sent Harvey to Texas and inundated the southwest corner of Florida with heavy rains. I’m certain He had some reason for attacking these deep red, wholly Christian communities, but I haven’t seen any move to the left in either case.
Don’t forget the Nazis were successful in the PROVINCIAL areas 1st. After gaining control of that region it spread like a “wild fire” over the whole country.
A Pence-Moore ticket is not an impossibility by 2010. Unless you’re dreaming, at present there is no effective opposition, as well as, NONE on the horizon.
The threat must be met at a much deeper level than partisan politics. Quite possibly, it might already be too late for that antidote.
The FASCIST CANCER might already be immune to any effective treatment.
“In conditions of great uncertainty, people tend to PREDICT the events that they WANT to happen actually WILL happen.”
~Roberta Wohlstetter, “Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision”
This is a prescription for disaster.
Anthony Hinrichs – your comment is a nightmare that could possibly come true.
Marv – was that a typo? Did you mean 2020?
Dear All: Yes, Yes, and Yes! The hardliners of Alabama (and there are a bloomin’ lot of ’em) love it this way. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and “Judge” Roy Moore and their mid-1800’s way of doing things is how it will go for the foreseeable future. Ain’t gonna change.
Right, Nancy! What a nightmare that would be!
OMG,
Thanks. I meant 2010. I must have been thinking about my 80- year-old vision which according to an eye examination I had last week is still 20/20.
OMG,
Sorry again. I meant 2020. Maybe it’s my age. It’s probably a continual sub-conscious mistake.
I’m not waiting for 2020.
What I’m trying to say: “There has to be an all out POLITICAL attack on Mike Pence NOW, not in 2020.”
We should have been in a position to attack the Japanese Fleet before it launched its attack on Pearl Harbor. Politically, I see no difference when it comes to Mike Pence who possibly might be President, even before 2020. In my mind, it’s an analogous situation.
We have to RE-ORGANIZE in order to effectively match-up with the FASCIST PROPAGANDA and PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE that Pence now has going to his advantage.
Make that a fascist, theocratic, oligarchy with legalized bribery.
On the other hand, who among us expected to see a left wing Democrat sent to the Senate from Alabama? Moore, after all, may truly represent the will of the people who are apparently set to send him to the Senate, and though I find their choice abhorrent, I suppose we can say that such an election if it comes off per the polls does reflect the will of the majority (unlike the presidential election of recent date). I think Moore should have been disqualified from holding public office for his refusal to abide by the Supreme Court’s holdings, but I presume that is a matter of state law and that there was no state law which addressed this situation. There are a lot of Supreme Court holdings I don’t like, beginning in the modern age with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and several others leading up to my greatest dislike, Citizens United, but as an officer or the court and a citizen, I am bound by them – until they can be reversed or modified. Moore, by my standards, should have been disbarred and/or jailed for contempt.
Charlie,
Thanks for the specifics.
What Walter said.
I have relatives in AL. I lived there in 1978-79 for about 18 months. I knew I couldn’t settle there permanently. None of my cousins my age finished high school. None of them. Thankfully, the next generation, their kids have finished high school and some actually went to college. They are liberals but they are outnumbered by the idiots and religious bigots. The ones that I still keep in touch with do not support #45.
Walter,
“I really worry that we are headed toward a time when the theocrats will win……. How do we reach those folks to provide them with an alternative point of view?”
It’s not all that difficult. Let them SEE that they can’t win.
Is an UNAVOIDABLE RACE WAR winning? In some minds, but not enough to carry the day.
I seem to recall an early-American flag or coin that simply said: “mind your own business”. It seemed funny to me at the time that the government would say this but I’m wondering if the sort of obsessing we see today with other people’s sexual orientation, religious views, lifestyle choices, etc. was behind the slogan. It’s good advice, but as with many problems in this country, such as abortion, or shoving religion down the throats of school children, religious zealots make it their religious mission to force their values and beliefs on other people, like Betsy DeVos, for example.
Gerald,
“There are a lot of Supreme Court holdings I don’t like, beginning in the modern age with the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and several others leading up to my greatest dislike, Citizens United, but as an officer or the court and a citizen, I am bound by them – until they can be reversed or modified.”
I agree with you 100%. However, as we’re now observing, you can’t always rely on the law to protect us. We have to be INNOVATIVE and find other ways to maintain our society’s equilibrium without violating the laws that are in place.
By the way, you’re still my “very long shot” choice for President in 2020.
Marv – Thanks for your vote, but I’m not running. My vote for president at this time is for Elizabeth Warren, who has yet to say something with which I disagree. We have never had the world’s greatest authority on bankruptcy run for president, but with a Republican House and Senate that somehow thinks you can cut taxes and reduce the budget at the same time (though necessarily at the expense of education and everything else except for defense) and call it good policy, perhaps it is time we elected such a president to navigate government shutdowns and Moody’s credit rankings.