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Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and Magnolia Springs Baptist Church Pastor David Gonnella address churchgoers during a question and answer session on July 12, 2015, in the church cafeteria. (By Casey Toner/ctoner@al.com)
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore told a church crowd on Sunday that the U.S. Supreme Court "destroyed the institution of God" by legalizing same-sex marriage.
Moore, who made national news when he ordered the state's probate judges to withhold same-sex marriage license in violation of a federal judge's decision, addressed a congregation of about 150 people at Magnolia Springs Baptist Church in Theodore.
"How do they come out now and say that marriage, which is ordained by God, doesn't mean what it's always meant, between a man and woman?" Moore said. "Not between two men, two women, or three women and one man.
"See, they don't have a definition. They've just destroyed the institution of God. Despite what they think, it's not their doing. Satan drives us. He's out there destroying everything God created including us as human beings."
Throughout his 35-minute speech, Moore sprinkled in biblical passages and religious quotes written by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as proof that the United States is a Christian nation.
Moore highlighted a line from a letter John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776: "It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty."
He spoke in support of his non-profit, the Foundation for Moral Law. Following his speech, he sold and signed $20 copies of his book "So Help Me God," and $5 pamphlets that featured speeches and writings from the founders of the United States.
Moore described a nation that is becoming increasingly secular. Growing up as a child, the phrase "Under God" was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance when he was in second grade, and "In God We Trust" became the national motto when he was in fourth grade, he said.
"By the time I was a senior in high school, they started to take away our rights by creating rights of privacy which led to the sexual revolution we are now experiencing," Moore said.
One day earlier, Moore told members of an anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group that "America is under attack."
On Sunday, Moore said the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage violates the freedom to practice religion, he said.
"Guess what, go to your probate judge down here and say I want a marriage license and if he doesn't believe in that, it doesn't matter," Moore said. "They are taking away the freedom of religious liberty, and we have to recognize what's going on."
Following his speech, Moore ate lunch with the congregation and answered their questions. Here's a sampling of some of his statements.
The sexual revolution
"The issue is not about same-sex marriage. It's about a sexual revolution. It's about having people decide whether they are male or female. You're talking about overturning God's natural order .... When you start teaching kids that they have the right to choose whether they are male or female. When you talk about three or four years old, you know what they think. They don't know much. They may learn fast. And when they get in their mind they can be a man if they're a girl or a woman if they are a boy, I don't know what the end is going to be. Except it will come down to things like when you take your little girl to the girl's bathroom and you wait outside and you see some guy with hairy legs going into that bathroom, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Are you going to stand back and let that guy go in the bathroom with your little girl?"
Religious liberty
"What we've been taught is somehow Christianity is bad for our country. And that government can't have anything to do with Christianity ... Religious liberty is for everybody. But you've got to recognize a particular God. You can't recognize Mohammed because Mohammed doesn't give you religious liberty. Mohammad enforces, they enforce Islam through the state. That's why this country is so different. You don't enforce Islam or any other religion. You don't enforce Christianity. Christianity is not something you can enforce. But you can encourage it. But you can't establish one sect of Christians over another."
Sexual dignity
"Do we think of dignity as self-direction? Well, that's the way God in my opinion thinks of dignity. It's dignity to have self-direction. That's what our country is about. You can choose your way through your self-representation. Justice Kennedy uses dignity in saying the state deploys dignity when it recognizes the marriage between a man and woman. It should do the same thing to same-sex couples. He said they have a dignity. You are hurting their dignity. My answer to that is the consummation of a marriage involves a sexual act which is dignified between a man and a woman but is not dignified and has not been dignified historically between a man and man. Therefore are you denying them that? Or are they pushing their definition of dignity on an immoral act that Christians are supposed to detest? Under the historic law, sodomy under Blackstone was an infamous crime in violation of human nature. He said it was a disgrace to human nature. He said it was so vile it could not be named in an indictment. We've taken that act and promoted it to a civil right. Now we've destroyed the institution upon which it is based."