Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore
The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who ordered probate judges statewide to defy an order from a federal district judge to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples is convinced that he is firmly planted on the right side of history.
In an interview Sunday with Fox News Host Chris Wallace, Chief Judge Roy Moore compared his opposition to allowing same-sex marriages to move forward in Alabama to that of judges who took exception to the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which affirmed slavery by finding that African Americans could not be U.S. citizens.
In Moore's parallel universe, if the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage nationwide, he could similarly exempt himself from being bound by that ruling.
“I could recuse or dissent as a justice from Delaware did in the Dred Scott case in 1857,” Moore insisted. “They ruled black people were property. Should a court today obey such a ruling that is completely contradictory of the Constitution?”
Head below the fold for more of Moore's delusional thinking.
To further justify his exception from a decision legalizing marriage equality, Moore invoked another regrettable 19th Century Supreme Court ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the justices upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation.
Here's Moore's rationale:
"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," Moore told Wallace.
"But they may do it," Wallace responded.
"They may do it, but they may do wrongfully," Moore shot back, "just like they did in Dred Scott and Plessy vs. Fergusson in 1896 where they said that 'separate but equal' was the policy of the United States."
Just to be clear, he's drawing an equivalence between expanding freedoms to gay couples and denying freedoms to black people.
In the event that the Supreme Court legalizes same-sex marriage, Moore imagined some sort of mass chaos enveloping the country in which the interpretation of the constitution becomes an every-man-for-himself proposition.
Such a decision, he explained, would mean that the "theoretical opinions of individuals" were controlling the meaning of the constitution and therefore we would effectively no longer have a constitution. Rather we would be "under a government of individual men who, for the time being, have the power to declare what the constitution is according to their own views and what it ought to mean."
Definitely sounds like someone who should be charged with interpreting the law.