Chalcedon Interviews Judge Roy Moore: His Fight for the Ten Commandments, Law, and Morality

For a man who has been driven out of public office, ridiculed and demonized in the media, and sued for more than half a million dollars, Judge Roy Moore — the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, nationally known for erecting a Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse — displays a formidable optimism.

"These are dangerous times," Moore told Chalcedon, "but God is at work, and He has not forsaken us."

Moore and some of his supporters have established the Foundation for Moral Law to continue his fight for the right to acknowledge God, publicly, as the source of American law and morality.

"They thought, if they put me out of office, that I'd go silently," he said. "They're wrong."

Moore was removed last year after he disobeyed a federal judge's order to remove the monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Courthouse. He has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and has since been sued for $500,000 in attorneys' fees by the leftist legal groups who worked for his removal.

Silencing the Truth

"It's not enough for them to remove me from office," Judge Moore said. "They want to stop the message, silence the truth. They hope to do that by ruining me financially.

"But as Thomas Jefferson once said, the truth is great and will prevail — unless disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate."

When a crew came to move Moore's monument into a closet, thousands of demonstrators turned out to show their support for the Ten Commandments and Moore's insistence on displaying them in public.

"The Christian church has been quiet long enough and will be quiet no longer," Moore said. "America is about to have a spiritual awakening."

Judges as Tyrants

"The problem of judicial tyranny in America must be addressed — and sooner rather than later," Judge Moore said. "What judges are doing now is unlawful, ridiculous, and illogical. They simply ignore common sense, logic, history, and the law."

As an example of judicial lawlessness, he pointed to a recent action in Seattle, Washington. There, King County Superior Court Judge William Downing ruled that his state must allow homosexuals to "marry," Washington's marriage laws being "unconstitutional." (The ruling is stayed, pending review by the state's Supreme Court.)

In his decision, Downing wrote, "The moral views of the majority can never be the sole basis for legislation."

"What would he have, then," Moore said, "as a basis for law — the immoral views of a minority?

"We have to recognize that the moral basis of our nation's laws is found in Scripture. There is no other morality. Truth and morality all come from Scripture, not human wisdom. And if this morality is not to form the basis for our laws, what basis do we have to forbid anything?"

Such a ruling by a judge, he said, "contradicts the first act of our First Congress — proclamation of a national day of prayer and thanksgiving. When judges rule according to their own feelings, they become tyrants."

Fixing the Problem

Judge Moore strongly supports U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby's Constitution Restoration Act and Rep. John Hostettler's Marriage Protection Act. Both proposals, currently pending in Congress, would remove from federal courts jurisdiction over such matters as displaying the Ten Commandments and defining marriage. In addition, the Senate bill provides for the impeachment of judges who cite foreign laws and court rulings as a basis for their own decisions. (In both Seattle and Massachusetts, judges appealed to Canadian and European laws as a basis for legalizing homosexual "marriage.")

"Such things as our public acknowledgement of God and our definition of marriage are part of our organic law and need to be protected," Moore said.

Part of the problem, he said, is that federal judges are appointed for life "and accountable to no one for their actions. They do whatever they please. They are vain in their own imaginations. That's why Congress has to remove their jurisdiction over certain kinds of cases."

Setting up another legal foundation to fight more battles in the courts, Moore said, might be seen as tacitly granting to the courts an authority they do not have.

"But I think it's important for us to go to court and force judges to recognize that they don't have such authority," he said. "It's an appropriate use of the constitutional process to make a moral point.”

High Stakes

If unrestrained judges finally do abolish the right of Americans to acknowledge God as the source of the nation's laws, morality, prosperity, and greatness, Judge Moore said, the consequences will be severe.

"If we cut off our relationship with God, we will lose our national morality," he said. "What's next for us? Legalization of pedophilia? Polygamy? There are already movements in those directions. It has to be stopped. If not, what'll happen to us? Exactly what George Washington said would happen."

Judge Moore signed off with a quotation from Washington's Farewell Address:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports … And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of a refined education … reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."