Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate from Alabama, was the featured speaker at a Values Voter Summit luncheon organized by the American Family Association’s political action arm today. Moore, twice removed from his job as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for defying federal court orders that conflicted with his religious beliefs, was right at home among his people.
Abraham Hamilton, one of several AFA speakers who addressed the group before Moore spoke, quoted George Washington’s farewell address, adding his interpretation:
To put it in modern parlance, George Washington was literally saying anybody who would attack biblical Christianity and biblical morality would be an enemy to the United States of America. That is a message that needs to be heralded loud and proudly in our country today, everywhere but especially in this institution we call the United States Senate.
Hamilton praised Moore for having “demonstrated, at great personal risk, his faithfulness to the word of God first, and secondarily to our Constitution.” Said Hamilton, “I believe he is the tip of the spear in what we need to usher America back into its place in submission to our holy God.”
Before Moore spoke, a video was shown depicting his battles over the Ten Commandments and prayer in his courtroom in heroic terms. In a theme Moore picked up on in his remarks, the video said the issue was never about the commandments themselves, but about recognizing the sovereignty of God.
“I’m going to explain why we have to go back to the Constitution,” Moore said, “It’s a limitation on the power of man.”
“God is not religion,” said Moore, claiming that Congress drew a distinction between religion as an institution and a belief in the sovereignty of God when they inserted the phrase “under God” into the
Pledge of Allegiance. “Why has America forgotten that?” he asked.
“We’ve got to get back to an understanding that it is not religion, it’s not prohibited by the First Amendment to acknowledge God, it is a mandate to acknowledge God.”
Moore said that Congress should have impeached the Supreme Court justices who affirmed the right of same-sex couples to get married. “Somebody should be talking to the Supreme Court of the United States and say, ‘What gives them a right to declare that two men can get married?’” he said, drawing a loud standing ovation. Moore not only opposes marriage equality; he believes same-sex relations should be illegal.
“Tell the Congress,” he said, “Impeach these justices that put themselves above the Constitution. They’re judicial supremists and they should be taken off the bench.” He then said impeaching one would “solve the problem.”
He also said that Congress should have impeached former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for her memo authorizing DACA, the program that deferred deportation action against some people brought to the U.S. as children.
Moore finished with a recitation of one of his own poems, which hit on just about every culture-war issue, including abortion, “sodomy,” school prayer, the teaching of evolution, and church-state separation.
Moore didn’t mention the latest controversy over the huge sums of money he took over the years from the nonprofit Foundation for Moral Law.
