For some time now conservative Republicans have been screaming about activist judges who put their own political opinions above the law. And they’ve been right to complain. But now, thanks to socially conservative voters in Alabama, we learn that they didn’t really mean it. What bothered them weren’t activist judges in general — but liberal activist judges in particular. Conservative activism by a judge who gets his marching orders from the Bible is apparently fine.

Republican primary voters in Alabama, many of them evangelical Christians, just elected Roy S. Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, as their nominee to run in December for the United States Senate seat held by Luther Strange, a conservative Republican who in their view wasn’t conservative enough.

And it didn’t bother those who voted for Mr. Moore that when it comes to activism on the bench, he not only makes no apologies for his disrespect for the rule of law, he pretty much brags about it.

In 2003, Mr. Moore was ousted as chief justice by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for refusing an order from a federal judge to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the grounds of the state judicial building — a monument Judge Moore himself had commissioned.