Roy Moore unwilling to budge on gay marriage
“George Wallace moved. I can’t move from my position because I’m bound to uphold the Constitution.”
— Alabama Chief Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, referring to comparisons that his vehement opposition to legalizing same-sex marriage is equivalent to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s “stand in the schoolhouse door” to prevent racial desegregation at the University of Alabama in 1963, according to an Associated Press article published in The Huntsville Times. Moore, who previously ordered state probate judges to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples, telling they were not bound to adhere to a federal judge’s ruling that Alabama’s ban on such marriages was unconstitutional, called the judge’s ruling “improper,” arguing that probate judges were not defendants in the same-sex marriage case and are thus not subject to any court order.
Moore has also argued that no federal court, not even the U.S. Supreme Court, has the right to define marriage, even while noting that a Supreme Court decision would bind the state courts. If the Supreme Court issues a favorable ruling on same-sex marriage later this year, Moore has promised not to acknowledge the decision in his judicial opinions and to dissent or recuse himself from any case involving same-sex marriage. A Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, Moore said, would be among the court’s greatest mistakes, even comparing it to rulings that allowed racial segregation, slavery and the legalization of abortion.
Image: Alabama Chief Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore. Image credit: Alabama Judicial System.
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