In a radio interview on Monday, former
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore claimed that he was removed from the
bench because he's opposed to the agenda of “the homosexual and
transgender groups.”
Moore is running for the U.S. Senate,
but he spent most of his time talking to radio host Sandy Rios about
his two suspensions from the Alabama Supreme Court. In 2003, Moore
was removed from the bench after he refused to take down a monument
of the Ten Commandments he installed in the courthouse rotunda.
Voters returned him to the court a decade later. His attempts to
defy the Supreme Court on its marriage equality decision led to his
second removal last year.
(Related: AL
Supreme Court upholds Roy Moore's suspension.)
Moore told Rios that his second ouster
was further proof that he is facing persecution for his Christian
faith.
“I did nothing wrong under the
canons. I did nothing wrong legally. I did everything according to
the law. But of course if you speak up today you’re going to
suffer persecution,” Moore
said. “I don’t like to be persecuted. I don’t like for
people to prosecute me without any cause, but that’s just what
Christians are supposed to do.”
“I was prosecuted without cause
simply because I oppose the agenda of the homosexual and transgender
groups,” Moore said.
He went on to call the Southern Poverty
Law Center (SPLC), the group which filed the complaint against Moore
that led to his most recent suspension, “probably the biggest hate
group in our country, because they hate God and they hate anything
about God and Christianity.”