Outspoken Alabama Chief Justice Meets with Gay Minister
Washington
Blade, February 28, 2003
MONTGOMERY, Ala.—A gay retired
minister met with Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore last week and said the
outspoken judge didn’t change his views on homosexuality, which he has
called “an inherent evil,” according to the Associated Press. Felicia
Fontaine, former pastor of predominately gay Huntsville Metropolitan Community
Church, met for about 30 minutes Feb. 19 with Moore at his Montgomery office.
“We left there agreeing to disagree,” Fontaine said, describing the
meeting as “cordial, personable and polite.” Court spokesperson Tom Parker
said Moore didn’t know Fontaine and other members of Soulforce Alabama were
coming but agreed to meet with her. “The justice was respectful but firm in
his position,” Parker said. A year ago, the Alabama Supreme Court voted
unanimously to award custody of three children to a heterosexual man in
Birmingham, saying he was better suited to raise the children, despite abuse
allegations, than their mother, who lives in California in a domestic
partnership with another woman. “The common law designates homosexuality as
an inherent evil, and if a person openly engages in such a practice, that fact
alone would render him or her an unfit parent,” Moore wrote. Fontaine said
she told Moore that his comments “dehumanized a whole class of people.”
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