Dear (suspended) Chief Justice Roy Moore,

Upon the decision of the Alabama Court of the Judiciary to suspend you from your position as Chief Justice of the state’s Supreme Court, there have been many questions raised and polarizing opinions expressed concerning your recent trial. Of course, being in a red state, where the majority of ideologies and sympathies lean toward the far right of the political spectrum, you have been able to garner much support among not only voters in your state, but of those living around the country who share the same sentiments that you do: that we are living in a time of great oppression and tyranny. Unfortunately, those sorts of phrases seem to be tossed around by a majority of white Republican voters who have not only a considerable amount of visibility, but also a formidable amount of political power. After all, there remains a majority Republican Congress on Capitol Hill. The problem with this is that this group of individuals really know nothing of oppression and the plight of minorities, especially since their platforms and policies favor keeping minority voices silent and resigned.

When you were appointed in 1992 by Gov. Guy Hunt as circuit judge for Etowah County, you first stirred controversy with the installation of a wooden plaque of the Ten Commandments behind the bench, and later in 1993 by opening court proceedings and sessions with prayer. In 1995, you faced two separate lawsuits, one from the ACLU, the other from the state of Alabama, concerning the constitutionality of your actions. The courts dismissed both, leaving you to run for chief justice in 1999 under the cause of “putting God back into the law.” Thanks to your newfound fame as the “Ten Commandments Judge,” you won, and celebrated by designing a monument that would depict “the moral foundation of the law”. Unsurprisingly, it was a massive granite monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the rotunda of the state judicial building.

Your passionate and unashamed confession of ordering of the installation of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state courthouse in 2003, led to the trial (or campaign) of the year, putting your name on the lips of the American right as a voice for them, a martyr, an activist set on keeping religion within the American judiciary. This is interesting, given the fact that you are challenging the same people who challenged you before. This raises the question, was this really a monument to God or a monument to Roy Moore and his claim to fame? You resisted the order of a higher court to have the monument removed, even as the decision of Glassroth v. Moore ruled that your actions had violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution. And despite the massive amount of support from citizens who donned signs with slogans like “Salvation is of the Lord. Sodomy is of the Devil,” your resistance to this decision led to your removal from the bench. This was, the higher court noted, because of your refusal to acknowledge separation of church and state as enshrined in the First Amendment. Upon reelection in 2012, you again showed promise for the right as an opposing force against the wave of change that was sweeping our nation and putting us in a “moral downfall.” This downfall was understood to be epitomized by the reelection of President Barack Obama, who promised to enact and oversee policies and changes that would alter the American landscape for future generations. One of the key changes your supporters feared was that lesbian and gay couples would finally see the day when they were free to marry and enjoy the same legal rights as their heterosexual counterparts. This, itself, sparked outrage and outcry within the state.

Soon enough, marriage equality was part of the Democratic platform, while the Republican Party remained dead-set against it. Despite the presence within their own party of gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans, hyper-conservatives went on to form the Tea Party to purge the smidgeon of progressivism that was had found its way into the GOP. In Alabama, the state legislature had already added, in 2006, the Sanctity of Marriage Act to its state constitution – which is, by the way, one of the longest and most unwieldy constitutions in the world – making marriage between same-sex couples illegal in the state. This law was struck down, though, in January of 2015 by Judge Callie Granade, a federal judge within the Southern District. Granade deemed the amendment unconstitutional, making gay marriage, for a brief period, legal within Alabama. The push back began immediately, though, as various probate judges defied the decision by denying the issuance of marriage licenses to same sex couples. Throughout the Obama years, the fight for gay rights and the plight of the LGBT community gained more visibility and cued a national conversation unlike any time before in our nation’s history. Upon the Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling in the landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges, the problem the right was resisting, the position they maintained, became legally indefensible. Now, everyone had to accept the fact that the definition of marriage extended to the gay community. Now back to you, Chief Justice Moore.

Instead of ordering the 68 probate judges within the state to adhere to the Supreme Court ruling, you ordered them to defy it. Not only did you defy the order of the highest court in the land, you flouted your own state’s standards of judicial ethics, and for what? To further your political agenda, to make a statement. Instead of accepting the fact that “the game [was] over” in the words of Alabama lawyer and former jurist Ashby Pate, the game had only just begun for you. Which brings us to today. The recent trial involving your resistance to “judicial tyranny” was even more scandalous than your first one, leading to a heated debate on the supremacy clause and what really is the supreme law of the land. In a state where it is not uncommon to find bumper stickers that read “God is Supreme, Not the Court” it is not hard to guess where those sympathies lie. However, for you, standards of judicial ethics triumphed over political interests, and led to your suspension, without pay, for the remainder of your term. Predictably, this prompted much woe from your supporters and much joy to your opposition. But the decision itself, by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary, speaks volumes to the progress the United States is making despite the resistance and bigotry of “the party of no,” to which you belong. It shows that progressive ideals concerning equality and human rights are making progress over the oppressive legislation and decisions from the past that hindered the progress of marginalized groups.

As a result of your recent conviction, acting Chief Justice Lyn Stuart wrote to you, requesting the removal of personal items from your office and the turning over of your keys to the state judicial building. You had, of course, appealed the decision of the Court of the Judiciary. You claimed, “it’s not her judgment to execute the judgement of the COJ”. Your attorney Matt Staver called her actions “mean-spirited and oppressive”, a deliciously ironic phrase given your track record, and the platform of your party. A party that, with Donald Trump as its current presidential hopeful, has a more visible and obvious form of bigotry and hatred embedded in its rhetoric and its actions than ever before. Now, as you seek an appeal, as eyes are on you, where will you go? What will you do? Will you ride the coattails of your past fame as you did before? State law says you will be too old to run for another term as chief justice. Are your sights set on the office of governor? Or will we, as a state, finally be able to separate ourselves from the oppression you yourself have promoted and perpetuated towards your state’s LGBT community?

There are, in my humble opinion, many parallels between you and former Alabama Governor George Wallace. In fact, perhaps you are the new George Wallace. Wallace was a man who took advantage of the Civil Rights Movement, capitalizing on such issues as race and the battle for integration to forge a greater political career. For you, it is religion and the supposed silencing of the Evangelical Christians and far right activists who support you. As I was born and raised among those who share the same beliefs as you within Alabama, I am well aware of just how damaging that bigoted rhetoric and regressive politics can be. I grew up gay in an area that denies the rights, and silences the voices, of gay individuals. It strikes me as hypocritical when the individuals who have successfully silenced the gay voices in their communities for generations, forcing them into the closet, are in such distress over supposedly being silenced themselves. Growing up gay in a state that treats you as less than, as almost another species, equating gays to pedophiles and zoophiles and other degenerate and practically subhuman terms, has given credence to a feeling of superiority amongst my heterosexual elders and peers. These “oppressed” people have criticized and ostracized and humiliated me and many others based simply on our sexuality. The age of Roy Moore, who summarized his views on gays in his opinion in a 2002 custody case in which one of the parents was gay by stating that homosexuality was “inherently immoral” and that gay parents should be subject to the state’s power to punish them through “confinement and even execution,” has shaped the outlook of the Deep South’s LGBT community, its survival, and its future. My question is this: when will it end? When will people like you, Judge Moore, end the hate? When will you stop the bigotry and the resistance to allow everyone equal opportunity? When will you allow a state that is accepting and inclusive to blossom and form of its own accord, rather than holding back the progress of those who have fought tirelessly to see a day when we value inclusivity instead of exclusivity? Maybe that day will never come, maybe it will, but it will be a long fight as long as people like you, Judge Moore, use hate and bigotry to fuel your political careers.