Roy Moore Wants to Make Gay Sex Illegal Again

Disgraced former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore is staging a comeback, and he's brought back all his old hits.

Moore is planning to run for the U.S. Senate again in 2020, having lost the race to Democrat Doug Jones in 2017 following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct involving underage girls. Last week he delivered a speech to the Huntsville Republican Men's Breakfast Group calling for a rollback of rights for LGBTQ+ people and other minority groups.

"We have got to go back to what we did back in the 60s and 70s, back to a moral basis," he said in the speech. "We did not have same sex marriage. We did not have transgender rights. Sodomy was illegal."

Appearing to reference Drag Queen Story Hour events in which drag performers read to children at local libraries across the country, Moore went onto claim drag queens are "teaching kindergarten children in this state and this community." He said, "In Huntsville and Mobile, they taught kids and they dress them up in drag."

Mobile did, indeed, host a Drag Queen Story Hour in 2018, but the programs are optional educational experiences for local community members. There appears to be no record of drag queens teaching kindergarten or forcing children to wear drag.

Moore continued to exploit the idea that queer culture is being forced on young kids, claiming that if families hope to stop the encroachment of LGBTQ+ ideology into their lives, they must vote him into office. "Gender identity is being taught in California to young kids and parents have no choice but to let their kids be taught that," he said.

But Moore, who was forced to step down from the Alabama Supreme Court after directing judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses, has a long history of demonizing LGBTQ+ people. In 2005, he told C-SPAN2 that "homosexual conduct should be illegal."

"Just because it's done behind closed doors, it can still be prohibited by state law," he said. "Do you know that bestiality, the relationship between man and beast, is prohibited in every state?"

In 2015, he said that being required to obey the Supreme Court's ruling on marriage equality was equivalent to being ordered to kill Jews. "Could I do this if I were in Nuremberg, say that I was following the orders of the highest authority to kill Jews?" he asked the news website AL.com. "Could I say I was ordered to do so?"

Moore announced earlier this year that he would once again run for Senate. Many Republicans, including Donald Trump, reacted with dismay. "Roy Moore cannot win, and the consequences will be devastating," Trump tweeted in May.

Following Moore's announcement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, "we'll be opposing Roy Moore vigorously." Meanwhile, the Republican-affiliated Senate Leadership Fund argued that "nominating Roy Moore would be gift wrapping this Senate seat for Chuck Schumer."

Moore previously two races for Alabama governor. He will face off in the Senate race against former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has previously held the seat.

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