Story highlights "Homosexual conduct should be illegal, yes," Moore said in a 2005 interview.

Later in the interview, Moore compared gay sex to bestiality.

(CNN) Roy Moore, a Republican US Senate candidate in Alabama, said in a 2005 interview that he believes "homosexual conduct" should be illegal.

Moore, a hardline conservative Christian and former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, made the comments in an interview with liberal commentator Bill Press on C-SPAN2's After Words. Moore appeared on the show to publicize a book he had just written about his expulsion from the court for refusing to take down a monument to the Ten Commandments.

During the interview Press asked Moore if he believed homosexual conduct should still be illegal after the 2003 landmark Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas that struck down a state law banning sodomy, rendering similar laws across the country unconstitutional.

"What I think is that it was illegal under the law, that the Supreme Court usurped the role of the legislature and ruled something about our moral law that is improper, and that's what we're finding the Supreme Court and the federal district courts are doing daily," Moore responded. "They've usurped the moral prerogative, now, if you want--"

Press cut in, saying, "I don't understand your answer. I think it's a yes or no. Do you think that homosexual--homosexuality, or homosexual conduct should be illegal today? That's a yes or no question."

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