Yesterday, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore spoke with Sandy Rios of American Family Radio about his bid for U.S. Senate, but spent most of the time discussing his two suspensions from the state supreme court, first for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument he installed in the courthouse rotunda and most recently for attempting to defy the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision.

Moore told Rios that his second suspension from the bench, a result of his insistence that Alabama judges flout the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision striking down state marriage bans, was further proof that he is facing persecution for his Christian faith.

“I did nothing wrong under the canons, I did nothing wrong legally, I did everything according to the law, but of course if you speak up today you’re going to suffer persecution,” he said. “I don’t like to be persecuted, I don’t like for people to prosecute me without any cause, but that’s just what Christians are supposed to do.”

“I was prosecuted without cause simply because I opposed the agenda of the homosexual and transgender groups,” Moore added, citing the complaint filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which he said is “probably the biggest hate group in our country because they hate God and they hate anything about God and Christianity, and they’re going to continue their deception by hiding behind that word ‘hate.’”