Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who is seeking to regain the office of chief justice, denounced same-sex marriage and predicted it would be the downfall of the country.
Speaking at a Tea Party rally in Fort Payne, Ala., on Saturday, the previously ousted justice said the nation must return to its moral and constitutional roots, reported the Birmingham News.
“We cannot continue to borrow the future of our children and our grandchildren or we will suffer the consequences. We can’t keep going into debt. We can’t keep disparaging our military and promoting things like same-sex marriage, L-G-B-T. To hear the President of the United States say that we are promoting L-G-B-T. Let’s think about what that is: lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered rights,” Moore said.
“Same sex marriage will be the ultimate destruction of our country because it destroys the very foundation upon which this nation is based. Divisive, I’ve been accused of being divisive I’ll tell you what’s divisive. It’s this Democratic platform,” Moore said.
Democrats, meeting in Charlotte, N.C. last month for the Democratic National Convention, approved a marriage equality plank in their platform for the first time in the party’s history.
State Rep. Patricia Todd (D-Birmingham) called Moore’s comments “laughable.”
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“We’re going to bring the downfall of the country? When you have war and the economy? When you look at states that have same sex marriage, they’re all doing pretty good,” said Todd said, who is also is the chair of Equality Alabama and the state’s first openly gay legislator.
Moore was elected chief justice in 2000 but was removed in 2003 for his refusal to obey a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he had commissioned from the rotunda of the state judicial building.
Video of Moore’s speech can be viewed here.