If anyone held out a shred of hope that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, after his best George Wallace impersonation this past week on the icky sight of happy couples being joined in wedded bliss, might possibly change his ways in the wake of widespread defiance to his wishes and even more widespread ridicule of his stance (for two of the best examples, see his on-air evisceration on CNN at the hands of Chris Cuomo and today's column from the always irreplaceable Leonard Pitts Jr.) might be ready to thrown in the towel, think again. As his apperance this morning on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace shows, he's still as defiant as ever:
Chief Justice Roy Moore said on "Fox News Sunday," that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of same-sex marriage, he wouldn't be "bound" by the ruling.
Nope, no backing off here. And why should he? According to Judge Roy, he's on a mission from God: (My apologies to Jake and Elwood Blues.)
Moore said that while the state will have to obey the Supreme Court's ruling, he doesn't believe that federal courts can create laws on marriage.
"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace asked Moore if he was putting himself above the law.
"When federal courts start changing our Constitution by defining words that are not even there, like marriage, they’re going to do the same thing with family in the future. When a word’s not in the Constitution clearly, the powers of the Supreme Court do not allow them to re-define words and seize power," Moore said. "The power is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states or reserved to the states respectively or to the people."
"This power over marriage, which came from God under our organic law, is not to be redefined by the United States Supreme Court or any federal court," he continued.
Apparently, Judge Roy realized his previous excuses of
trying to prevent the slippery slope to father daughter marriages or
"I love my gay friends, I just don't want them to marry" weren't really cutting it and decided to fall back on the old last ditch religious right fallback stance of "I'm just doing God's will." Took him long enough.
However, whatever Judge Roy thinks about what God desires, man's law doesn't look too favorably on him. And with the Southern Poverty Law Center having filed a new ethical complaint against him over his behavior, the odds are increasing that Judge Roy may well end up as he did a decade ago when he was thrown out of office over the Ten Commandments flap.
De ja vu, perhaps? But clearly, Judge Roy prefers to go down with the ship. The man wants his martyrdom. And who knows? If he gets thrown out of office again, Alabama voters may just vote him back in. Because some addictions are hard to shake.