Gay, Religious Groups Demand That Moore Resign
By Dana Beyerle, Montgomery Bureau Chief
Originally published in The Tuscaloosa News, February 23, 2002
MONTGOMERY — Local and national homosexual and religious groups on Friday demanded Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's resignation because of a legal opinion in an adoption case involving a lesbian mother.
"Moore's opinion could have been written by the Taliban," said Lorri L. Jean, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which claims 500 members in Alabama. "He has proven that he is a religious fanatic who can't separate his personal beliefs from his judicial mandate to dispense fair and impartial justice."
About two dozen representatives from religious groups, along with more than 100 gay-rights supporters, gathered outside the building that houses the Supreme Court. The rally was opposed an opinion written by Moore in which he called homosexuality an "inherent evil."
"It is dangerous to seem to characterize any group of human beings as inherently evil," said the Rev. Tim Holden of Grace Episcopal Church in Birmingham. "Such opinions can lead to prejudice, fear and violence."
Moore's defender, Dean Young, executive director of the Christian Family Association, called those giving speeches outside the Alabama Judicial Building fringe groups who do not represent the average Alabamian.
"What you are seeing is hostility toward a Christian judge and hostility toward Christianity," Young said. "They're just opportunists trying to get their views across."
A spokesman for Moore, Scott Barnett, said Moore would not resign.
Moore is the Etowah County judge who rose to prominence after opposing attempts to get him to remove a copy of the Ten Commandments from his Gadsden courtroom.
He was elected chief justice in 2000 and became involved in controversy again when he erected a 5,280-pound monument to the Ten Commandments in the Judicial Building under the cover of night.
On Feb. 15, Moore wrote a concurring opinion in a 9-0 decision that denied child custody to a lesbian who originally agreed to turn her children over to their father. After moving to California, she tried to reclaim them, saying the father was abusive.
Justice Gorman Houston, who wrote a unanimous opinion that was largely on procedural grounds, said the Court of Civil Appeals wrongly re-weighed evidence from a trial court that originally gave custody to the father.
He said the mother did not meet the legal requirements to modify custody.
Moore in his opinion wrote that homosexual conduct of a parent "creates a strong presumption of unfitness that alone is sufficient" to deny a parent custody.
"It is an inherent evil against which children must be protected," Moore wrote, citing state laws that prohibit homosexuality.
Moore went on to write that the state has the responsibility to protect families and has the "power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution."
"Judge Moore's prejudiced statements demonstrate that he is unable to render fair and impartial judgment," said Seth Killbourn, national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian organization.
Moore's opinion and the rally fell nearly three years to the day after a gay man, Billy Jack Gaither, was beaten to death and his body burned in Sylacauga.
A state Senate committee this week approved a bill that would make violence against homosexuals based on their sexual preference a hate crime. The bill would have to be passed by the full Senate and House and approved by the governor before it can become law.
