By Chip Brownlee
Alabama Political Reporter
It’s no secret anywhere former Chief Justice Roy Moore is no fan of same-sex marriage, but the leading Senate candidate on Thursday took it one step further, cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin after being questioned on the topic.
In an interview with The Guardian, a British newspaper, reporters asked Moore what he thought about his view on same-sex marriage being similar to Putin’s, who has cracked down on what he has said is “homosexual propaganda” in schools. Putin has also turned a blind eye in the Russian state of Chechnya as gay men have been tortured and even killed.
Moore responded to the question, saying, “Well, maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.”
Moore has been thrust into the national spotlight several times throughout his political career. First in 2001 and 2003 when he refused to comply with court orders directing him to remove a Ten Commandments panel from a state court house and later a two-ton granite monument at the State’s judicial building.
And last year he was effectively removed from his post as Chief Justice after defying the US Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges. Both of the instances appear to have done nothing but propel the 70-year-old conservative to greater popularity in a state dominated largely by evangelical Republican voters.
In the same interview, Moore also reversed President Ronald Reagan’s famous statement that the Soviet Union was the “focus of evil in the modern world” onto the United States.
“You could say that about America, couldn’t you? We promote a lot of bad things,” Moore said, citing same-sex marriage as his prime example.
In a poll released Wednesday, Moore appears comfortably ahead of Sen. Luther Strange and US Rep. Mo Brooks in the US Senate special primary election to replace Jeff Sessions, who vacated the seat in order to become President Donald Trump’s attorney general.
In the poll, Moore also appears to lead in a hypothetical match up with Strange, who leads Brooks for the second-place finish needed to place him in a runoff required if no candidate reaches 50 percent in the race.
