Sweet home Alabma?
I don’t have anything against Alabama.
I’ve never gone there.
Chances are, if I’m allowed to keep my free will, I never will.
A hundred years after the Civil War ended, Alabama acted as if it hadn’t.
It was ground zero in the fight to keep segregation thriving.
By the mid-1960s, it had become the stubborn and often violent reminder for the nation’s segregationists “that the south would rise again.”
Many of the iconic events of the struggle for racial equality were on full view in the state capital and on the bloody streets of Alabama.
In fact, the acclaimed film “Selma” pays homage to the Selma to Birmingham marches, and the one historians have named “Bloody Sunday.”
Rosa Parks, with her personal act of civil disobedience, ignited the famed Montgomery Bus Boycott, after she merely refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger; Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letters from Birmingham Jail” chronicled his arrest for simply being part of demonstrations; there was the mistreatment of Freedom Riders, who’d wound their way through the south on Greyhound buses, but who were beaten by angry mobs in Anniston, Birmingham and Montgomery; and there was the cowardly act of bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, that led to the deaths of four small children.
Alabama was at the center of change in the 1950s and ’60s. But for all the wrong reasons.
It has yet to hang its head in shame.
This all might seem to be ancient history for some people. But consider the fact that just 15 years ago (November of 2000), Alabama finally passed a constitutional amendment that repealed the state’s ban on interracial marriage.
A measure that 40.51 percent of Alabama’s voters voted against.
These days, you might be able to add the name Roy Moore to the list of Alabama’s most nefarious public officials that already includes Bull Connor and George Wallace.
Oh, Moore, who’s the state’s Chief Supreme Court Justice, has never stood in the way of school buildings to prevent black students from entering the way Wallace did.
Or, he’s never presided over street beatings the way Bull Connor did.
He has, though, shown the same kinds of bald-faced disregard to federal authority those two did.
Moore has claimed that a federal court’s ruling that struck down a same-sex marriage ban was illegal. “It’s my duty to speak up when I see the jurisdiction of our courts being intruded by unlawful federal authority,” said the 67 year-old Republican.
Moore told the state’s 67 county probate judges that they should ignore the court’s ruling.
That they don’t have to hand out marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Then, last Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court jumped into the fray. By a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court ruled to let the lower federal court’s decision to stand.
That, after Moore’s meddling, left many of the state’s probate judges in a tizzy.
Most of them refused to issue marriage licenses.
While Alabama is the 37th state to allow same-sex marriages, only a few people who’ve qualified have had the opportunity to marry.
This isn’t the first time Moore has butted heads with the feds.
In 2003, he refused to follow a federal court order to remove a two-and-a-half ton Ten Commandments monument from an Alabama state building.
That Ten Commandments monument was removed, but not before Moore was removed from office, thanks to a unanimous ruling by the state’s ethics panel.
He was re-elected in 2012, and he’s dug his heals in against the federal government again.
He doesn’t seem to have learned anything since his first firing.
Judge Moore believes homosexuality is evil.
I get that.
This hasn’t, or shouldn’t, have anything to do with his personal feelings regarding public policy handed down by two federal courts.
While he thumbs his nose at decisions beyond his jurisdiction, he’s now joined the George Wallaces and Bull Connors of the world.
Those folks didn’t win.
I’m willing to wager Moore won’t either.
He’ll just make a national spectacle of himself.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net