Donald Trump may have been a disruption to the establishment when he was elected president, but he holds the office with a questionable set of values that are an embarrassment to all Americans. However, he’s a corrupt opportunist and can be persuaded to drop or forget those values if benefits him. Roy Moore is far more dangerous, as he lives and dies by his beliefs and has no qualms about putting it all on the line in order to get what he wants. And having that type of person in office frankly poses a far bigger threat to democracy than we’ve ever faced before.
If being an accused child molester is not enough reason to reject Roy Moore, below are six other things every American should know about the Alabama candidate, his politics, and the movement he represents.
1. He has been removed from office for defying the law. Twice.
Moore was first ejected from the role of chief justice in 2003 when he disobeyed a court order to remove a 5,200-pound monument of the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the state’s judicial building. He ran for the same position again in 2012, but was permanently removed in 2016 after he was caught encouraging probate judges to disobey the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage.
2. He uses religion and slurs in equal measure to bolster his cause.
“We were torn apart in the Civil War — brother against brother, North against South, party against party,” Moore said at a rally in September. “What changed? Now we have blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting. What’s going to unite us? What’s going to bring us back together? A president? A Congress? No. It’s going to be God.” When confronted by those who were offended by his comments and found them tasteless, Moore did not back down, instead taking to Twitter to emphasize that the sentiment was religious in nature and therefore true. “‘Red, yellow, black and white they are precious in His sight.’ Jesus loves the little children of the world. This is the Gospel. If we take it seriously, America can once again be united as one nation under God.”
3. He thinks 9/11 was God punishing America for rejecting his values.
Moore feels that because “we legitimize sodomy” and “legitimize abortion” in America, we are effectively rejecting the word of God. According to CNN, he expounded on this to a crowd at a campaign rally, saying that the 9/11 attacks were in retaliation for those stances: “Because you have despised His word and trust in perverseness and oppression, and say thereon . . . therefore this iniquity will be to you as a breach ready to fall, swell out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instance. Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn’t it?”
It also didn’t stop there. “If you think that’s coincidence, if you go to verse 25, ‘There should be up on every high mountain and upon every hill rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers will fall,'” Moore added, noting, “You know, we’ve suffered a lot in this country, maybe, just maybe, because we’ve distanced ourselves from the one that has it within his hands to heal this land.”
4. He has been on a vendetta against LGBTQ+ families for years.
In his ruling on a 2002 custody case involving a lesbian mother, Moore described homosexuality as “an inherent evil against which children must be protected.” He’s a vehement objector to the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling (see point No. 1), and when confronted about the fact that his beliefs were similar to those of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moore responded by saying, “Well, maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.”
5. Despite all the evidence, he still thinks Barack Obama isn’t an American.
A CNN investigation uncovered that Moore was still saying that Obama wasn’t American as recently as the end of 2016. Yes, that’s right — even after Trump admitted that the birther thing wasn’t real, Moore still believed it.
6. He honestly believes that parts of the US are under Sharia law.
Moore revealed this stance to Vox’s Jeff Stein back in August. Here’s the exchange, verbatim, because it’s just too wild to describe:
Jeff Stein: “Some right-wing conservatives think Sharia law is a danger to America — do you?”
Roy Moore: “There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country. Up in Illinois. Christian communities; I don’t know if they may be Muslim communities. But Sharia law is a little different from American law. It is founded on religious concepts.”
Jeff Stein: “Which American communities are under Sharia law? When did they fall under Sharia law?”
Roy Moore: “Well, there’s Sharia law, as I understand it, in Illinois, Indiana — up there. I don’t know.”
Jeff Stein: “That seems like an amazing claim for a Senate candidate to make.”
Roy Moore: “Well, let me just put it this way — if they are, they are; if they’re not, they’re not. That doesn’t matter. Oklahoma tried passing a law restricting Sharia law, and it failed. Do you know about that?”
Jeff Stein: “No, I don’t.”
Roy Moore: “Well, it did.
Whatever Republicans think having Roy Moore in the Senate will accomplish, it isn’t worth it.
