Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore told the audience at the Family Research Council’s “Faith and Family Summit” on Friday that if the Supreme Court rules that states don’t have the right to impose bans on same-sex marriage, it would give immense power to the federal government. If marriage and family life become federal issues, Moore warned, “they’re going to be taking your children simply by the same logic they’re following.”

“They’re going to define who your children can be and who they answer to,” Moore said. “People will say, ‘oh we couldn’t go there, ‘well we’re going somewhere else right now that we didn’t think we would be going.”

Moore told FRC President Tony Perkins that “Christians need to stand up and do their duty to God as their duty to their country” by fighting gay rights. He declared that the issue of marriage rights is much more important than foreign affairs, immigration, economics or the national debt: “This is the most critical issue that faces this country. And I want to disagree a little bit with what I’ve heard about asking our presidential candidates [about marriage rights]. We should not have to ask them, Tony. If they haven’t come up and said it, they should not even be considered.”

If the court introduces the “redefinition of a word that existed for thousands of years before this country came into existence, and if we go there, then we’ve ruined the definition of the family and we’ll go to parent-and-child [marriage] next.”