Former judge and Alabama senate hopeful Roy Moore. (Joe Raedle/Getty)
Anti-LGBT+ former judge Roy Moore, who thinks gay sex should be illegal, has thrown a party to unveil a Ten Commandments monument and said that the LGBT+ “movement” is attacking religious freedom.
Moore is known for his anti-LGBT+ views, his unsuccessful run for the US Senate in Alabama and for facing allegations of sexual misconduct towards teenage girls.
He lost his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2003 after displaying, and then refusing to remove, a Ten Commandments monument in the state courthouse. The monument was a violation of the separation of church and state.
He returned to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012, but was removed permanently in 2017 due to ethics violations while trying to block same-sex marriage in Alabama.
He has now moved the same monument to the far-right Christian legal advocacy group Foundation for Moral Law, or FML for short, which he founded with his wife Kayla. As it is private property, there are no constitutional issues.
Roy Moore said if you speak about LGBT+ people, they will “come after you”
At the Ten Commandments monument unveiling party, Roy Moore said in his speech that a “lack of morality” was to blame for “senseless murders” and “political corruption”.
Throughout the speech, protesters could be heard shouting outside and Moore eventually addressed the interruption.
He said: “No one talks about the LGBTQ movement. It’s verboten, in German. You don’t talk about it because they come after you. That’s why you see protesters. But that movement is taking away our religious liberty.”
He added: “I don’t hate anybody out there. I’ve never hated anybody. I hate sin. Sin is not people. I love people. And I wouldn’t love them if I didn’t tell them it was wrong.”
In a 2015 interview, Moore refused to say whether he supports gay people being put to death.
Moore recently said that he wants to go back to a time when “sodomy was illegal”, and same-sex marriage and trans rights did not exist.
In June 2019, Moore announced that he was running for Senate yet again.