By Bill JuneauI was always of the opinion that Judge Roy Moore of Alabama had been pummeled by Democrats and kicked aside as a whipped dog whose barking had gotten under their skin. That dog of course had been and still remains a hero to a myriad of Christians and conservative Republicans who saw sense in Judge Moore's denunciation of the gay lifestyle and its influence on small children; and the crushing need for Christian views in the news.
When Moore ran for the United States Senate in 2017 to replace Jeff Sessions who had resigned after being appointed Attorney General by President Trump, he was heavily favored to win election over an unpopular democratic candidate.
But as the campaign rolled forward, the twice-elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was made into a sexual predator, who, 40 years ago, as an assistant district attorney, had been hitting upon teenagers, and had been barred from visiting a local shopping mall because teens feared his presence.
Moore said that the accusations were lies and exaggerations, and pure political garbage. But, no one believed him. The attack on his character was so devastating that he was defeated in the race for U.S. Senator by Democrat Doug Jones who won a narrow victory on the back of the bitter attack on Moore's character.
Moore, 74, had twice served partial terms as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme court and had generated national attention when he declined to recognize same sex marriage licenses and fought to display a stone tablet containing the Ten Commandments in his courtrooms and in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial building. For his stubbornness in favor of decency and Christian tenets, he was removed as the state's highest legal officer.
After he was defeated in his race to be a United States Senator, and despite the shellacking he took by the Democratic-controlled mainstream media, he vowed that he will never fold his tent. "I'm not going away," Moore has said, promising that he will eventually set the record straight. "Allegations that I sexually hounded teen aged girls 40 years ago are political lies sold by frantic Democrats. They were garbage then and are garbage now.
His so-called journey for redemption as a viable leader got a push start last summer when a jury in U.S District court awarded him $8.2 million in damages finding that a Democratic aligned super PAC defamed him in a TV ad by recounting lies about him during his failed 2017 bid for U.S. Senator.
Alabama today is one of the nation's strongest Republican or Red states. The 2017 election of a Democrat to Congress in Alabama was surprising and Democrat Jones went on to serve two years in the office, functioning as a rubber stamp for Democrats. He was easily defeated for election to a full six year term in 2020 by Republican Tommy Tuberville, a popular ex-football coach, with the backing of President Trump.
Roy Moore graduated from the United States Military academy at West Point and went on to serve as an army officer with service in Vietnam. Following his active duty as a soldier, Moore enrolled as a student in the University of Alabama law school and was graduated with a Juris Doctor degree.
He was an assistant district attorney in Etowah county in Alabama from 1977 to 1982. Then, almost 40 years later, in 2017, several women were highlighted by the Democrat-controlled media as having been hit upon sexually by Moore; and that his presence had been barred from a shopping center at which large numbers of young women would normally be present.
The women magically came forward during the senatorial campaign, complaining of the conduct of Moore. It was never explained why the women had been silent for four decades and during more than a half dozen other elections in which Moore had been both a successful and unsuccessful candidate in the intervening years.
In 1992, Moore was appointed a Circuit Judge by Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt to fill a vacancy; and subsequently was elected to the office. In 2001, he was elected Chief Justice of the state's highest court, and in 2003, he was removed from the office for ignoring a federal court order to remove a marble monument of the Ten Commandments that he had placed in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building.
His heart has always been in the right places, and to him, the Ten Commandments were a positive way to live. Moore always kept those writings on his courtroom walls and when he became Chief Justice, he had a marble carving display of the commandments placed on courthouse grounds. Woke and LGBQT supporters and the ACLU complained that the location of the commandments violated rules calling for separation of church and state, but Moore disagreed and declined to remove them on principle. Eventually he was made to leave office because his Christian beliefs conflicted with allegations that religion and government must not be intertwined.
In 2013, Moore was elected for a second time as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme court,and he took a position that marriage was a sacred union between one man and one woman. He declined to allow the issuances of same sex marriage licenses, and eventually was made to resign given his religious positions.
Same sex coupling is a "union" of two men or of two women. Such twosomes can be endorsed by federal and state laws and can be spelled out in legislation; and those benefits of a same sex union can be tailored so as to mirror benefits allowed men and women in traditional marriages.
But, says Moore, "Marriage" is and always has been for hundreds of years and should remain as a sacred union of one man and one woman. That is the definition of "marriage." Same sex unions of two moms and two dads is not a "marriage," and never will be.
Bill Juneau worked for 25 years as a reporter and night city editor at the Chicago Tribune. Subsequently he became a partner in a law firm and also served as a village prosecutor and as a consultant to the Cook County Circuit Court and to the Cook County Medical Examiner. He is currently writing columns and the 'Florida Bill' blog.
