Roy Moore Quotes
The First Amendment to the Constitution reflects that concept recognized in the Ten Commandments, that the duties we owe to God and the manner of discharging those duties are outside the purview of government.
Moore, Roy. Interview by Brian Lamb. Q&A, C-SPAN, 19 June 2005.
The then current example was with same sex marriage. Some people who claimed that their religion declared same sex marriage as a sin and prohibited their aiding and abetting that activity. As a result, they claimed that their right of religious freedom allowed a county clerk to refuse to issue the marriage license or a hotel to refuse to allow a gay couple to rent their facility for a wedding, or a retail store to refuse to sell the couple bedding.
Religious organizations may become grantees or contractors to perform various social services—along with other non-profit organizations provided, that they do not comingle the government contract money with the general church funds, that the services that are provided are provided to all regardless of religious beliefs, and that there is no religious ceremony or indoctrination in the provision of services. Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army are two of the larger religious organizations that receive government funds for general service provision. Those religions who do not want Federal Auditors reviewing their use of the money or who insist that prayer is a necessary aspect of the social services are the ones who have trouble and accuse the government of being hostile to religious social services.
While this principle is very clear to us today, and was to the people who originally ratified The Constitution, there were many attempts by Christian groups to establish a privileged position for Christianity. For example, for years the Sunday Sabbath was legally enforced by unconstitutional Blue Laws that prohibited businesses from operating on the Christian Sabbath and prohibited activities that compete with Sunday church attendance. Supreme Court Justice Story even argued that the First Amendment allowed Christian religious supremacy and Cooley wrote this to refute Story’s now discredited doctrine.
This is a critical quotation on the government establishment of religion issue. There are a few people who have argued over the years that the Founding Fathers and their culture was religious and where they were careful to avoid favoring one religion over another, they did NOT intend to put atheism on the same equal plane as religion as far as government action is concerned. However, some of the Founding Fathers were atheists, and some others like John Adams were deists—they believed in a God but not in the Trinity or in Judaism or any organized religion. So this quotation makes it clear that the First Amendment does NOT favor religion over non religion or secularism. Atheism must be on an equal footing but not on a higher plane.
Roy Stewart Moore is an American politician who served as the 27th and 31st chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama and was each time removed from that office by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for judicial misconduct. He was the Republican nominee in the 2017 United States Senate special election in Alabama to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, but lost to Democratic candidate Doug Jones. Moore ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate in 2020.
