roy moore

U.S. Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore at Republican Women of Huntsville luncheon Tuesday June 6, 2017. (Bob Gathany / gathany@iScout.us)

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Guy V. Martin

By Guy V. Martin, Jr., who has lectured on legal issues, including as Adjunct Professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, and teacher at the Birmingham School of Law, and worked extensively on projects such as the Turf Club, downtown hotels (the PickWick complex, Redmont and Tutwiler), Crossplex, and various public ventures, including several with his cousin, the late David Vann, former Mayor of Birmingham, during the Arrington years. He is semi-retired, and serves as a Director of The Foundry Ministries.

As a practicing lawyer since 1974, lay minister, Vietnam veteran, Roy Moore's teacher at Alabama School of Law, and close observer of Justice Moore's two tenures on the Alabama Supreme Court, I feel compelled to share some concerns.

As a preface, I share Justice Moore's devotion to the Ten Commandments and am thrilled for any public person to espouse the values we share. So are those who twice removed Justice Moore as Chief Justice: many are devout Christians.

That said, when you vote Tuesday, you might consider the following:

One: Roy Moore did not get along with his colleagues in law school or on the Supreme Court. The arguments were not over Christianity.

In law school, the arguments arose from what Disraeli called "falling into a deep groove of illogic and being helpless to allow reason to pull you out." If Moore's analysis of a case was tantamount to thinking 1 + 1 = 3, and his classmates reasoned otherwise, there was no backing down by Moore. The class was willing to fight to the death against illogic that no legal mind but one in America would espouse.

Moore never won one argument, and the debates got ugly and personal. The result: gone was the fulfillment a teacher hopes for in the still peace of logic and learning. I had no choice but to abandon the Socratic method of class participation in favor of the lecture mode because of one student: Roy Moore.

Two: As Chief Justice, Moore continued that trend. He violated years of precedent, established by Jefferson, who once wrote that he only hoped he could serve our country like Christ wanted him to. Yet, Jefferson fought to ingrain the principle of religious freedom in our Constitution, at a time of state-sponsored churches and religious persecution.If you were Baptist, your taxes supported other churches and you often were persecuted. If Moore's actions were lawful, a chief justice could flaunt Islamic or Buddhist icons in schools and authorize probate judges to deny marriage licenses to scarf-less women, as contrary to Sharia law.

His colleagues tried to reason with him, but he couldn't get it: the world experience, backed by an ocean of blood soaking battlefields across our earth-and religious wars were not ancient events during Jefferson's times-proves that the way to run a country is with tolerance. Do we need God in America? Absolutely. Let Moore devote his life to converting every American to Christianity-I'm for that-and that still does not eliminate the risk of persecution, unless all are members of the same church. Baptists could be persecuted, just like they were before our constitution. Christian men smarter than Moore, including titans such as Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison, would use a far sharper pen in dealing with Moore.

Three: The conservative cause is seeing fragile times. I serve an organization dedicated to promoting free enterprise, and desperately want to see change, including, as one of many examples, elimination of regulations choking our nation's spirit. To help this nation change, we will need senators who get along. Who can convince.

This is not an endorsement of Strange or Jones. This is a wake-up call: the instant Moore wins the runoff is the instant his tarnished reputation as a twice-removed Chief Justice will scald the airwaves of CNN and MSNBC.

The DNC will pour money into the campaign coffers of Doug Jones, smelling blood in solid Democratic support for Jones and from moderate Republicans.

In Washington, Moore would be Senator Irrelevant, the poster child for stubborn resistance to common sense legislation such as repeal of ObamaCare and decrease in taxes, standing on some piece of sideways' thinking nobody in or outside the Swamp would respect.

A vote for Moore will be a vote for Doug Jones and against the conservative cause.