Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy
Stewart Moore has compared opposition to marriage equality to
resisting slavery and segregation.
The Nevada-based Coalition of African
American Pastors (CAAP) honored Moore last week for his opposition to
allowing gay couples to marry, bestowing on him their inaugural
Letter from a Birmingham Jail Award, which was inspired by the famous
letter calling for a non-violent response to racism written by the
late civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Moore injected himself into the
marriage debate in Alabama, ordering state probate judges – who
issue such licenses – to ignore a federal judge's ruling striking
down Alabama's ban. A subsequent order from the Alabama Supreme
Court put a temporary halt to the weddings of gay couples.
In accepting the award at the steps of
the Alabama Supreme Court, Moore compared federal court decisions
striking down state bans on gay marriage to Supreme Court decisions
in Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott v. Sandford.
In Plessy, the high court upheld
state laws requiring racial segregation in public accommodations.
After reading a passage from the
dissent in Plessy, Moore
said it “seemed to ring very true in the issue before this
country today about same-sex marriage and taking away the institution
of marriage as between one man and one woman.”
The blog Left
in Alabama captured video from the event.