Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s 2017 U.S. Senate campaign imploded amid allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers and lack of support from some national GOP leaders—in spite of a desperate last-minute push by religious-right activists and right-wing funders from around the country. This year, Republicans are eager to take back the seat from Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, but polling has showed Moore stuck at fourth place among Republican candidates heading into today’s primary. So anti-equality activist Brian Camenker made a last-ditch appeal on Moore’s behalf in a commentary on the website of his organization MassResistance.
Camenker’s support for Moore is hardly surprising. Moore recently talked about the need to take the country back to a time when abortion and sodomy were illegal. And Camenker is one of the most intensely anti-LGBTQ activists out there.
Camenker’s Sunday column at the MassResistance website praised Moore for his willingness to defy Supreme Court rulings he disagreed with, such as Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality decision. Moore was twice removed from office, once for refusing to abide by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on separation of church and state, and again for ordering state judges to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling.
Moore’s record has put him at the fringes of even a very right-wing Republican Party, but to Camenker, Moore’s actions and rhetoric mark him as “a true constitutionalist.”
“Many rightly consider him America’s greatest conservative figure since Phyllis Schlafly,” Camenker wrote.
Camenker complained that the Republican Party “threw Roy Moore under the bus,” adding, “If America had just a few more leaders like him, we’d be in much better shape.”
Former U.S. senator and Attorney General Jeff Sessions is favored to win the primary, but his standing in Alabama has been harmed by relentless derision by President Donald Trump and he may not clear the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
