Last week, the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), a small group associated with the National Organization for Marriage, presented Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore with its first “Letter from the Birmingham Jail Courage Award,” comparing Moore’s defiance of federal courts on marriage equality to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil disobedience during the civil rights movement.
Moore accepted the award by comparing federal court decisions in favor of marriage equality to the infamous Supreme Court decisions in Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. Reading a passage from the dissent in Plessy, Moore said it “seemed to ring very true in the issue before this country today about same-sex marriage and taking away the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman.”
The blog Left in Alabama captured the video:
After the presentation of the award, a reporter in the audience repeatedly asked Moore and CAAP President William Owens how they thought legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples would undermine marriage for straight people.
“It takes away the very definition ordained of God,” Moore responded. “A different definition destroys the definition of marriage. It’s not about the right to marry. There is a right to marry in our Constitution and the constitutions of the majority of the states, but it’s between a man and a woman.”
Owens took a different tack: “First of all, it’s not natural law and it’s immoral. It’s not natural for man to be married to a man. That is not natural. And that’s what this award is about. Dr. King emphasized it must line up with natural law. And if you believe that so much that a man should marry a man or a woman should marry a woman, go try it with electricity.”
