Roy Moore on bench.JPG

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in court March 6, 2013. (Bob Gathany / bgathany@al.com)

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How can one explain Roy Moore's latest foray into the issue of same sex marriage in Alabama and America? How can one explain why, after months of quiet, he has thrust himself and our state again to the front of the stage to be mocked and derided as a place of bigotry?

How can one explain Roy Moore?

If you felt that Alabama's Chief Justice's office had erroneously distributed a year-old press release on gay marriage yesterday, you're not alone. Alas, Moore seems hell bent on relitigating an issue that Alabama spent much time (and taxpayer money) arguing in 2015.

Demonstrating a dangerous lack of understanding of Judicial Review, Moore argues that Alabama is not bound to follow last year's Supreme Court ruling because it should only apply to the states listed in the case. Most shockingly, however, he compares compliance with the same-sex marriage ruling with complying to Plessy v. Ferguson, which infamously codified a system of "separate but equal."

Ignoring the fact that Alabama willingly, joyfully championed the segregationist ruling - and that Alabama also fought against the overturn of these discriminatory laws - to use an outdated ruling that has been struck down to justify current actions of discrimination is disgusting. Charitably, we could say that Moore saw an obscure Kentucky clerk get 15 more minutes of attention a few months ago, when her state removed the clerk's names from marriage licenses to assuage the thrice-divorced woman's concerns for "the sanctity of marriage." If anyone is going to be the poster child for anti-gay bigotry on this issue, Moore is determined it will be him, not her. And that it will be Alabama, not Kentucky, that is condemned by future generations.

Less charitably, Moore seems determined to be remembered with other Alabama icons such as Bull Connor, Jim Clark and George Wallace when history is written about equal rights in America.

We must recognize Moore for what he is -- a two-bit politician wrapped in judicial robes, a grasper and attention-seeker with delusions of grandeur, a man who desperately wants to be Alabama's governor and who has seriously considered himself as qualified to be president of these United States.

Roy Moore is delusional about Roy Moore. The only bad thing that has happened since Alabama acquiesced to the ruling of America's Supreme Court is that Moore hasn't got enough attention, so once again he has "ordered" probate judges to not issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Over the past several months, meantime, hundreds of Alabamians have quietly married and continued happy lives together, assured that they will be legally recognized as spouses, not having to worry whether one could care for the other in sickness or that they could share a full, equal life in health.

Moore's latest salvo will pass quickly, as will his attempts to garner attention. Already many counties are ignoring him, as he deserves, and U.S. attorneys are rightly putting his "order" in context as irrelevant but for its mischief value.

It is time Roy Moore realized that he is wrong. He is wrong on this issue, he is wrong in thinking he might ever be governor of Alabama, he is wrong in seeing himself as of presidential timber, he is wrong in thinking that he matters.

Already, there are citizen calls for his impeachment. He will soon go into retirement and be remembered as a bigot, disrespectful of the law and of his fellow human beings. That might be the only memory he has earned in his time in public office. And, hopefully, Alabama's citizens will be remembered as the ones who showed him the door.