Hundreds Rally to Call for Resignation of Roy Moore
Tuscaloosa
News, March 9, 2002
P.O. Box 20587, Tuscaloosa, AL 35401-0587
Fax: 205-349-0802
Email: bob.blalock@tuscaloosanews.com
By Stephanie Taylor, Staff Writer
TUSCALOOSA—Several hundred people rallied on the
steps of Gorgas Library at the University of Alabama on Friday to call for the
resignation of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
"It’s both saddening and frightful that we have a member of this
state’s highest court of authority that uses his capacity to rule in a
manner of personal bias and prejudice," said Jon Macklem, University of
Alabama Student Government Association President.
The rally, sponsored by the UA Human Rights Alliance and the UA Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Alliance, featured 10 speakers, including
professors, students and clergy.
Protesters held signs reading such things as: "Vote Moore for Führer,"
"Go back to law school Roy Moore" and "No Moore hate."
Recalling the civil rights rallies of the 1960s, the Rev. J.R. Finney of
Birmingham’s Covenant Metropolitan Community Church said, "This is
déjà vu all over again."
Finney, who once marched at Washington with the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr., said he and other community leaders are "in it for the long
haul" and are organizing a movement to protest Moore’s status as the
state’s top jurist.
"Judge Moore," Finney said, "your tactics may play in some
parts of Alabama, but you’re on the wrong side of history, and I want you to
know that it’s no badge of honor to be the Bull Connor of your era."
Moore, 55, has been a lightning rod of controversy in his nine years as
jurist—eight in Etowah County and the past year on the state’s top court.
He first gained national attention by displaying the Ten Commandments in
his Etowah County courtroom. A similar monument is now in the Supreme Court
building.
Most recently he has come under fire for a Feb. 15 opinion he wrote
involving a child custody case and a lesbian mother. In it he called
homosexuality "inherently evil."
"I can tell you his opinion is poorly argued, poorly written and
poorly reasoned," UA law professor Bryan Fair said. "It
misrepresents Alabama law."
Fair said the weakness in Moore’s arguments surfaces in the fact that he
had to reach back to an 18th-century jurist—William Blackstone—to find
support for his reasoning.
"Now is the time to shout in our loudest voice that we will not go
back to an oppressive America," Fair said.
Rally organizers said they might meet every Friday at noon in the same
place.
"East Germany was overthrown by a small group meeting in one place.
This can be our place," said UA American Studies Associate Professor Rose
Gladney.
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