Roy Moore to bring back Ten Commandments monument
February 7, 2020
The Ten Commandments monument, the source of a two-year legal fight resulting in Roy Moore losing his position as Alabama chief justice, is coming back to Montgomery.
Almost 20 years after the controversy of the monument’s installation on Moore’s order – followed by a court-ordered removal two years later – Moore said Thursday he plans to display it again.
In a Facebook post Thursday, Moore said that the monument will be returned to Montgomery next week for display at the Foundation for Moral Law – the non-profit started by Moore and whose president is Moore’s wife Kayla.
The foundation’s offices are located at One Dexter Avenue in downtown Montgomery and just blocks from the Alabama Judicial Building where it was first displayed.
“One of the most important issues affecting our Country is a lack of morality,” Moore said in a Facebook post Thursday. “The Ten Commandments represent the ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,’ upon which our Nation began in 1776.”
Moore was forced from office as chief justice on Nov. 13, 2003, for refusing to follow a federal court order to remove the monument. The 2 ½ ton granite monument, which had the Ten Commandments engraved at the top on tablets, had been taken from the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building less than two months earlier.
Moore – who is a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate held by Doug Jones — originally had the monument installed on July 31, 2001.
Moore said the monument is scheduled to be placed at his foundation Tuesday between 3-4 p.m. and the public is invited to attend. Moore will also hold a press conference.
Moore was sworn into office as chief justice in January 2001 after winning election in November 2000. The monument was installed six months later with Moore having not told his fellow Supreme Court justices about it.
A federal lawsuit objecting to the monument was filed Oct. 30, 2001, and U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered in November 2002 that the monument be removed.
Moore’s appeals were rejected and the monument was removed on Aug. 27, 2003.
“Our decline as a nation will not be at the hand of a foreign power or external enemy but will occur only when we lose that virtue and morality, under God, upon which we began,” Moore said in the Facebook post. “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God are not only the source of our morals but also our unalienable rights. We have the right to religious liberty because God said, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me,’ and we have the right to life because God said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
