Roy Moore, Alabama’s "Ten Commandments judge" is running for Senate and touting his religious convictions along the way.
“I want to see virtue and morality returned to our country and God is the only source of our law, liberty and government,” Moore said during Thursday’s debate with Luther Strange. He has also called religious liberty “the civil rights issue of our time” in a written statement about prayer in public school and claimed that God punishes the U.S. for immoral behavior.
Moore is best known for installing a monument of the Ten Commandments at the Alabama Supreme Court during his tenure as Chief Justice and getting suspended when he defied a court order to remove it.
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Here are ten of the craziest things Moore has said about church and state, gay rights, evolution and divine retribution.
Separation of Powers
Moore’s ten year fight to install the Ten Commandments at the courthouse went hand in hand with his beliefs in the importance of Christian values for the United States.
“The Church's role should be separated from the state's role. That is the definition of separation of church and state. But separation of church and state was never meant to separate God and government,” Moore told Gwen Ifill during an interview with PBS Flashpoints USA in 2004.
Moore went on to further explain his beliefs in 2015 during a speech he gave to the fundamentalist Christian political organization, Operation Save America.
"I'm sorry but this country was not founded on Muhammad. It was not founded on Buddha. It was not founded on secular humanism. It was founded on God," he said according to reports by AL.com.
Islam
Moore has also been critical of Islam saying that it goes against America’s way of life.
“[Islam is] a faith that conflicts with the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Moore said during a 2007 radio interview with Michelangelo Signorile, “The Constitution and Declaration of Independence has a direct reference to the Holy Scriptures.”
He then echoed the sentiment this past July and called Islam a “false religion” during an event with the Jefferson County Republican Club.
“False religions like Islam, who teach that 'you must worship this way,' are completely opposite with what our First Amendment stands for," Moore said.
Gay Rights
Moore’s ardent stance against gay rights cost him his second stint as Alabama Chief Justice last year after he banned Alabama judges from issuing same sex marriage licenses. Moore also sided against a lesbian woman during a custody battle because of her sexuality in 2002.
“It is an inherent evil against which children must be protected,” Moore wrote in his opinion on the case.
CNN also uncovered a 2005 interview between Moore and Bill Press during C-SPAN2’s After Words where he compared homosexuality to bestiality.
“Just because it’s done behind closed doors, it can still be prohibited by state law. Do you know that bestiality, the relationship between man and beast is prohibited in every state?” Moore told Press. When asked if Moore was comparing homosexuality to bestiality, he replied, “It’s the same thing.”
Evolution
Moore also refutes evolution.
“There is no such thing as evolution,” Moore told The Washington Post. “That we came from a snake? No, I don’t believe that.”
God’s Wrath
Moore has harsh words for unbelievers. He even implied that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were God’s retribution. During an event at the Open Door Baptist Church, he quoted a passage from Isaiah that described a faithless people who suffered a sudden and relentless fall.
“Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn't it?" Moore said. “If you think that's coincidence, if you go to verse 25, 'there should be up on every high mountain and upon every hill rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers will fall.' You know, we've suffered a lot in this country, maybe, just maybe, because we've distanced ourselves from the one that has it within his hands to heal this land."
When not quoting the Bible, Moore also draws upon his own poetry. During a press conference to defend the Ten Commandments in 2003, he read his poem, Our American Birthright where he praised America’s founders for their faith then lamented the fall of the US as a Christian nation. Three stanzas stand out.
