You can disagree with someone, even when it comes down to civil rights, and still be polite and respectful. Especially when someone is in a difficult time like grieving.

But this man, who calls himself a Christian, openly laughed at a gay man grieving over his dead husband. And it is cruel.

It happened in Alabama, and as the Chief Justice Roy Moore was speaking after being suspended for defying the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling.

He will go on trial in September.

A few hundred feet away from Moore’s speech to crowds with many holding signs like ‘homosexuality destroy families’ and ‘sodomy ruins nations’, there was an alternative press conference organized by the Human Rights Campaign.

Among the people speaking there were people like Dr Paul Hard, who has been involved in a legal fight for his husband who died five years ago to be recognized as his husband.

And when he began to speak about his partner’s death, a man in the crowd laughed.

‘You can’t have a husband,’ he said.

John Archibald, a columnist who was there at the conference, asked: ‘How can any man, no matter his position on Roy Moore or any issue, stand before another and mock his pain?

‘How can one stand under the banner of God and laugh at another man’s death?

‘How — in the name of God — can one deride genuine grief?’

He added: ‘Christians cannot let these people define their religion. All they have is volume. As a substitute for moral authority.’