Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on
Tuesday called on Governor Robert Bentley to defy a federal judge's
rulings striking down Alabama's ban on gay marriage.
U.S. District Judge Callie “Ginny”
Granade has declared unconstitutional a law and a constitutional
amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples in two separate
rulings handed down only days apart.
(Related: Federal
judge sides with plaintiffs challenging Alabama's gay marriage ban in
second case.)
In a letter to Bentley, a Republican,
presumably penned before Granade issued her second ruling, Moore
stated that with regard to marriage Alabama's laws “have always
recognized the Biblical admonition stated by our Lord.”
“Today the destruction of that
institution is upon us by federal courts using specious pretexts
based on the Equal Protection, Due Process, and Full Faith and Credit
Clauses of the United States Constitution. … If we are to preserve
that 'reverent morality which is our source of all beneficent
progress in social and political improvement,' then we must act to
oppose such tyranny!”
“I ask you to continue to uphold and
support the Alabama Constitution with respect to marriage, both for
the welfare of this state and for our posterity,” he
added.
In 2012, Moore, who was ousted from the
bench in 2003 for refusing to remove from public property a monument
of the Ten Commandments which he had commissioned, criticized
President Barack Obama's endorsement of marriage equality, saying
such unions will “destroy the very foundation” of America. Last
year, he called for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting
gay couples from marrying.