Q Toon: Need I Say Moore?

Last week, Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, declared that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling favoring marriage equality throughout the land does not apply to the state of Alabama because ... well, just because.

[Moore] insisted that the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found that same-sex marriage bans violate the federal Constitution, was not binding in Alabama because the state was not a party to that specific litigation. Because Orbergefell did not “directly invalidate” Alabama’s same-sex marriage ban, Moore wrote, the law remains in force until the Alabama supreme court strikes it down. 

 A lower court in Alabama has already ruled for marriage equality:

Last January, Judge Callie Granade tossed out the Alabama ban as a violation of the 14th Amendment, a decision which the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to endorse. She reaffirmed her decision in May. Then, following Obergefell, Granade explicitly held that the ruling invalidated Alabama’s marriage law—precisely the legal formality which Moore says never occurred.

There has been a suggestion that Moore's edict, while certainly in line with his well-known hostility to gays and lesbians, was timed to distract from the trial of his son Caleb on drug charges. Caleb entered a not guilty plea on December 21 to charges of possession of marijuana stemming from an arrest last March. Caleb has complained that his repeated arrests are all because of attempts by nefarious forces to smear his paw.

This is the third time I've featured Papa Moore in a cartoon. Non-Alabamans may remember Moore Senior from thirteen years ago:

In 2003, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary removed Moore from his post as chief justice for defying a federal court order to remove a gargantuan monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building. After his bids for the governorship in 2006 and 2010 ended in the primaries, voters reelected him as chief justice in 2012.