Judge Roy Moore Condemns PBA Ruling

Courageous Christian hero and the former Alabama Chief Justice Judge Roy Moore publicly apologized and repented for his initial celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court's PBA ruling! In an exclusive radio broadcast on the nation's most-powerful Christian radio station, Denver's AM 670 KLTT, Judge Roy Moore reversed his public support for the brutally-wicked Gonzales v. Carhart PBA ruling. (See ARTL's PBA Fiasco Summary.)

American RTL below publishes the full transcript of that interview.

EXCERPTS:

• You know, things aren't always as they seem. And when this ruling came out, many praised the ruling; in fact I was one of them. I had not fully read the ruling... But then when you read the Carhart opinion, you realize what they have done is atrocious.
• Quoting the Carhart ruling itself: "In addition, if intact D&E is truly necessary in some circumstances, a prior injection to kill the fetus allows the doctor to perform the procedure given that the act's prohibition only applies to the delivery of a living fetus."
• When I heard someone say "This opinion does not save a single human life" [referring to Dr. James Dobson], they are correct.
• I've never seen a court so apologetic to abortionists... that is very wrong.
• [Gonzales v. Carhart] actually sets another bad precedent if you will. It sets a precedent in 2007 of how you can take life. And that's just bad.
• We have put the rule of man above the rule of law.
• We've got judges across our country [and] in Colorado no doubt, that are eliminating any acknowledgment of a sovereign God from public view...
• I likened this Carhart opinion, to... just like in Germany, a court in Germany, during the Holocaust coming out and saying, The Congress has just passed a rule that we couldn't gas these Jews but it certainly allows us to put them in a deep ditch and cover them with dirt while they are still breathing. You see, that is how atrocious this Carhart opinion is. It says you can still kill them, you just have to do it a different way. Now if anybody doesn't believe that that is what this opinion says, I invite them to read it. ... You have just got to read the opinion.
• Well, we all stand in need of some correction. And I can admit I was too, I needed that, I spoke too quickly. But you know, all you have to do is read the opinion.
• In the 1700s precedent was defined as precedent as long as it didn't conflict with reason, logic or the law of God.

See the full transcript just below or listen here to Judge Moore on Denver radio analyzing the PBA ban, and then hear the judge with best-selling author Gregg Jackson four years later furthering the case against the PBA ban along with his analysis of the failure of what ARTL calls the "pro-life industry." And please make sure to see American RTL's brief PBA summary, PBA Ban Fiasco: Saves None, Wasted Years. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Note: To find the newsworthy portion of this interview, search for "Begin PBA Ruling Discussion" which begins Judge Roy Moore's account of reversing his position on the recent PBA ruling, for now that he has read the ruling himself, and has seen how brutally wicked it is, he has come out against it. This interview aired on Bob Enyart Live in Denver on the 50,000-watt KLTT at 3 p.m. on August 16, 2007.

Talk Show Host Bob Enyart: Greetings to the brightest audience in the country, I am Bob Enyart, the pastor of Denver Bible Church. We have a great guest today. ... A few years ago, you heard the news about a hero in Alabama, the State Supreme Court in Alabama, had a Chief Justice, Judge Roy Moore, who stood up to extraordinary pressure, mostly from people who do not want to honor God and they wanted the monument to the Ten Commandments out of the State Court House and Judge Roy Moore was a hero. As the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he did not want that monument removed because there is an inalienable right to honor God. Well, eventually, he lost his job because of the courage he showed in standing up to honor God, and what an honor it is right now to welcome Judge Roy Moore to Bob Enyart Live. Hello, Judge, how are you?

Judge Roy Moore: Fine sir, how are you doing?

Bob: I am doing really well. Thank you for that heroism back in, was that back in 2003?

Judge Moore: Yes.

Bob: Just a few years ago. So, thank you for that. And you did succeed in electrifying many conservative Christians to find a public official who desired to honor God above any other consideration.

Judge Moore: Well, Pastor, what people don't understand about this matter, is that when you can be called a hero for just doing your job, well, we are in a sad state of affairs because that is what all officials are supposed to be doing. Judges that are elected, sworn to uphold the Constitution of their state and the Constitution of the United States. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States forbidding a monument, it is not about the Ten Commandments. It was about the acknowledgement of a sovereign God. And there is nothing in the Constitution whatsoever that forbids that, in fact, the first amendment to the Constitution; "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...", would not exist without the acknowledgement of the sovereignty of the Judeo Christian God, which gave to us freedom of conscience, and government was precluded from interfering with it. Now through manipulation of words and fraudulent tests, it has nothing to do with the First Amendment, we simply distorted the law. And it is not law, it is simply bad precedent. And what we should do is go back to the Constitution and recognize the sovereignty of God as it was meant to be.

Bob: In fact, the Constitution, at the very end of the Constitution, we find that it was ratified in the Year of Our Lord, which I think they were referring to Jesus Christ. I don't know who else you can date...

Judge Moore: That's where the date comes from, you're right.

Bob: Right, and so at least there was not the hostility toward our God when the Constitution was drawn up and ratified as there is today.

Judge Moore: No. In fact, what you have to recognize is as late as 1931 and 1946 in the case of the United States vs. McIntosh and subsequently the case of Girouard v. the United States. That the United States Supreme Court recognized that religious liberty comes from God. In fact, in 1931 Justice Sutherland, who wrote the majority opinion said, "We are a Christian people, according to one another, the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God." Chief Justice Charles M. Hughes also wrote basically the same thing in his dissent. In other words, they dissented, they disagreed on the final outcome of the case, whether a Canadian Pastor had to take an oath to fight in a foreign war. But they did not disagree on where the freedom of religion comes from. In 1946 Girouard v. the United States, William O. Douglas, wrote basically the same thing. He said, "Throughout the ages, men have suffered death rather than subordinate their allegiance to God to the authority of the state." Freedom of conscience guaranteed by the First Amendment is a product of that struggle. What we have done today is simply fulfilled the scriptures, specifically Romans the first chapter, verse twenty one. "Because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing themselves to be wise they became fools." We have done exactly what Scripture says we would do. We have become vain in our imaginations. Our foolish hearts have darkened, and we have tried to distance ourselves from God. I think verse twenty eight says "Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient." In other words when we become so vain and foolish to think that we don't need God, then God gives us over to our own imaginations.

Bob: That passage you just quoted from, Romans one, that's the creation passage. Because Paul says that, "Since the creation of the world, God's invisible attributes are clearly seen..."

Judge Moore: ..."seen and understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so that we are without excuse."

Bob: So that, He is our Creator God, and we have an inalienable right to life, in other words, it is non-transferable.

Judge Moore: Right. If you will look at that passage that you just quoted, it says "They [the evidences for God] are manifest in us." That is evident in us. That is exactly where they [America's founders] got the concept of "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator." So that is right in the Declaration of Independence.

Bob: Yes, what may be known of God is manifest in us. "In them..."

Judge Moore: "That which may be known of God is manifest in us."

Bob: In human beings, so that's the right to life. It would not be wise to base our right to life in majority opinion or secular humanism or the laws of science. The laws of science don't say anything about right and wrong. But our right to life comes to us from our Creator God. I would like to ask you Judge Roy Moore, does a civil government have the right to authorize the intentional killing of an innocent person?

Judge Moore: No. Bob: They don't have that right?

Judge Moore: No. And why is that? If you will go back to Nazi Germany, when the Nazi's killed the Jewish people and after the war was over, we tried them under a law, but what law did we try them under? We couldn't try them under our law because our law was the U.S. Constitution. We couldn't try them under their law, their law certainly didn't forbid what they had done. We tried them under the natural law. The law that no person, no government, has the right to take innocent life. Now you know, government does have the right, your life can be forfeited under the law when you kill another individual, but they can't take an innocent life.

Bob: Right. We are talking with Judge Roy Moore, by the way Judge, you are the Chairman of the Foundation for Moral Law, that's right?

Judge Moore: That's right.

Bob: And their web site is MoralLaw.org. The Judge has authored, So Help Me God, and other publications. So a government, a civil government does not have the right to authorize the intentional killing of an innocent person. It's another matter if someone is convicted of a capital crime; we are not talking about that. But we are talking about things like the genocide that happened in Germany, we are talking about things like the killing of unborn children, right here in America.

[Begin PBA Ruling Discussion] Well, Judge Roy Moore, the reason we called you is because we got a rather exciting call from Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, the Reverend Flip Benham. And he said "Bob, Colorado Right to Life out there in Denver, where you guys are, you guys have been trying to educate the public about this recent partial birth abortion ruling. I had an exciting talk with Judge Roy Moore, who is helping us get the word out that that ruling is a destructive ruling". Did I get that right? Could you tell us about this Gonzales v. Carhart ruling?

Judge Moore: You know, things aren't always as they seem. And when this ruling came out, many praised the ruling; in fact I was one of them. I had not fully read the ruling, but I had read and been briefed on certain portions of it. Which there are some things in it that sound good. They called life within the body, the fetus, living, and they did uphold a Statute of Congress to restrict a certain method of abortion. But then when you read the Carhart opinion, you realize what they have done is atrocious. When they talk about partial birth abortion, they are talking about a particular method where a child is delivered all but its head, and this is gruesome, and I hate to talk about it, but this is what's in the opinion.

Bob: We understand.

Judge Moore: They stick something in the back of the head and with a powerful suction device, suck out the brains and kill the child while its hand are moving and its feet are moving. And they [the court] said, "You can't do that". But then they said this. The act says [it must be] a living fetus. So if you administer poison, and this is in the opinion (I'll find the quote in a moment), in fact, it says, if you administer a poison and kill the child two days before it's born, then that's ok.

Bob: Right. In fact, I think this might be the first time the Federal Government has weighed in on basically giving us a virtual abortion manual for late term abortion. And they specify the different ways that you could kill the late term fetus and that one way is they say you can give an injection, you could give an injection that would kill the fetus and then proceed with what would otherwise be a standard partial birth abortion. They also say things like if you modify this late term abortion...

Judge Moore: This is really bad, yeah.

Bob: This is really bad. Right.

Judge Moore: They said if it is not an intact fetus, in other words, if you go inside the womb and rip off an arm or a leg, it is not born intact. And therefore you would avoid the statute. And it goes further and says that if you mistakenly deliver it past the anatomical boundaries prescribed by the act...

Bob: The bellybutton.

Judge Moore: Then basically, you don't violate the intent of the statute. I've never seen a court so apologetic to abortionists to tell them how to obey this statute. And that is very wrong. Here's the part I was going to read. "In addition, if intact D&E is truly necessary in some circumstances, a prior injection to kill the fetus allows the doctor to perform the procedure given that the act's prohibition only applies to the delivery of a living fetus." This is saying you can poison the child and deliver it. So basically, when I heard someone say "This opinion does not save a single human life", they are correct. Because all they have done is tell the doctors and physicians that perform abortions how to avoid the act. And they say you can still do it, but you have got to do it this way!

Bob: And now we are very thankful that Dr. James Dobson put out in his monthly newsletter and it is on their website, this correction. Because Focus on the Family was one of many organizations that came out early saying that this is a victory for life and this is going to save children. And Dr. Dobson did clarify this one point. He said, "Banning partial birth abortion does not save a single human life." And that is a grave tragedy because the pro-life movement has been working toward this for fifteen years. And Judge Roy Moore, there are many pro-life leaders and I could name a few for you like: Judie Brown, American Life League, Flip Benham, Operation Rescue, there is Alan Keyes, Ambassador Alan Keyes who is one of my hero's...

Judge Moore: Oh yes, he is very intellectual.

Bob: Alan Keyes is extraordinary. In fact, he participated in our event here in Denver the week this ruling came out. We were at the Capitol, the State Capitol, in the Supreme Court Chambers. And Alan Keyes eloquently explained why this ruling was actually a destructive ruling that violates the law of God, the law of man, and all decency.

Judge Moore: Oh it actually sets another bad precedent if you will. It sets a precedent in 2007 of how you can take life. And that's just bad.

Bob: Yes, and now we have this as a Federal Law, which actually, the federal law explains, the ruling quotes from the ban and it upholds it explicitly, that if you pull the baby out to the bellybutton, you can kill the baby. That would be a partial birth abortion, it's just a four-inch variation. And so here's what's happening, Judge Moore, from our perspective. I've worked with Colorado Right to Life for years and we have been tracking the beliefs of our judges. And by our judges, I mean Republican conservative judges who are typically called pro-life, who are nominated by pro-life Republican presidents, and then we, our side, lobby for their confirmation, and we are beginning to realize by reading their rulings, their writings, their interviews, that they actually oppose the personhood of the child.

Judge Moore: Well, there is a reason for that pastor, and you can talk about the [Ten Commandments] monument in Alabama, you can talk about pro-life. You've got to understand why this is so. It is so, because, we have put the rule of man above the rule of law. In other words, our law is the Constitution of the United States. When judges rule according to their feelings and other judges follow it, they're not following the law, they are following other judges, who've ruled according to their feelings. This was clearly pointed out in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sanford.

Bob: I've read it.

Judge Moore: In that case, a black person was declared to be property of their master and could not bring a suit in federal court. One judge dissented and his name was Benjamin Curtis. And Benjamin Curtis said, if I can recall this, "When a strict interpretation of the Constitution according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws," he basically said, go by their words and the definitions. When that is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we no longer have a Constitution, we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have the power to declare what the Constitution is according to their own views or what they think it ought to mean. So, in other words, what Benjamin Curtis was saying, in 1857 is as true today as it was then. When we allow judges to substitute their feelings and their passions and their emotions and their predilections for the law and other judges, Republican, conservative or whatever follow them, they are not following the Constitution they're sworn to uphold, they are following men, not law.

Bob: And what we term that here, in this event we had at the Capitol, we have produced a documentary called Focus on the Strategy with Alan Keyes, Judie Brown, Flip Benham, I participated, I'm the Pastor of Denver Bible Church, locally. And we use three terms to describe this phenomenon. We call it secular humanism: when men get together they can decide what is right and wrong and pass laws on their own consensus or opinion. We call it moral relativism. And we call it legal positivism. Legal positivism, that if the law says you can kill a child, then judges and officials are doing the right thing by abiding with that rule to kill a child.

Judge Moore: The law does not allow that. The ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade said that a woman possessed a right to do that. They found that right in a variation of the First, Third, Sixth, Ninth and so forth amendments, but it isn't there. So what they ruled is not law and it should be abandoned.

Bob: What they ruled is lawlessness.

Judge Moore: That's right. And so basically, if you call it legal positivism, to follow a bad ruling then yes, that's wrong [to follow it]. But I don't think that we are bound, you see, judges are sworn to uphold the Constitution, not errant courts that have departed from the Constitution and ruled according to their own feelings. Nothing could be clearer in this case. We've got judges across our country [and] in Colorado no doubt, that are eliminating any acknowledgment of a sovereign God from public view and saying it is because of the First Amendment. Read the words, and you can see that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." In my case in Alabama, we pushed the court to define the word religion. And the court said they couldn't do it. They did not have the expertise. And then they said it was even dangerous and unwise to define the word. And the definition I gave them which I took from the United States Supreme Court, and the people who proffered that Amendment, they said that they could not follow that because it violated their religious sensibilities. Indeed when we can't follow words, or when we can make words mean whatever we want to mean, then we end up, the courts making the law, which is not law.

Bob: Right. And the web site is MoralLaw.org. Judge Roy Moore, I understand what you said when I called you a hero, but I'm sorry, you are just going to have to bear with it. Because to many of us, you are a hero. Because we are not used to our public officials honoring God above any other consideration, and especially when it means they are risking their career, their status, their position as a Chief Justice of a State Supreme Court no less. Now earlier you mentioned the Nuremberg trials in Germany. And what happened there, we tried, judges, we put them on trial, judges who ruled to kill innocent people. There was a man, Markus Luftgas (Time Magazine: "WAR CRIMES: The Bureaucrat" Mar. 29, 1948; UMKC Law School's Prof. Doug Linder's: "The Nuremberg Trials: The Justice Trial"), a Jewish man who was tried and sentenced to death for hoarding eggs. He didn't steal the eggs, he was [accused of] hoarding them. This is well documented. The Allies put on trial the judge who sentenced Luftgas to death, and that judge, his defense was, I didn't agree with the Holocaust, I didn't like the policy, but I was merely following precedent and I was upholding the law.

Judge Moore: Well, you know, I talked to one of my lawyers, and I likened this Carhart opinion, to that. I said, well it's just like in Germany, a court in Germany, during the Holocaust coming out and saying, the Congress has just passed a rule that we couldn't gas these Jews but it certainly allows us to put them in a deep ditch and cover them with dirt while they are still breathing. You see, that is how atrocious this Carhart opinion is. It says you can still kill them, you just have to do it a different way. Now if anybody doesn't believe that that is what this opinion says, I invite them to read it. That is the only thing they have to do. There is no argument about what I am saying. You have just got to read the opinion. Don't listen to what other people say about it.

Bob: That's a great point. Colorado Right to Life, I think may have been the first organization out with an analysis of the ruling, extensive excerpts from the ruling and if you go on the Internet today at Google, and you Google Gonzales v. Carhart analysis, just those words, quotes, no quotes, it doesn't matter. Out of the thirty some thousand pages, their analysis is number one on the Google search. Colorado Right to Life Gonzales v. Carhart Analysis. They were posting the ruling from day one, asking our Christian leaders and our pro-life leaders to read the ruling before they claimed this to be a victory.

Judge Moore: Well, we all stand in need of some correction. And I can admit I was too, I needed that, I spoke too quickly. But you know, all you have to do is read the opinion. It doesn't matter, if you don't believe what someone is saying or if you want to prove whether they are telling the truth or not, what do you do? You go to the opinion and you read it. Don't listen to somebody else, go to the opinion and find out for yourself. That is what we are supposed to do as intelligent beings.

Bob: Yes, so Judge Roy Moore, we're almost out of time, but I want to leave you with this thought, and it is a concern that we've been documenting: wonderful, godly, Christian leaders, pro-life leaders, who have basically adopted the defense theory at Nuremberg, and they've been saying this. We've pointed out that federal judges, if you could go back a couple of years, federal pro-life Republican judges, who were voting to keep partial birth abortion legal, they were voting to keep legal partial birth abortion and their arguments, like with the 2000 case in New Jersey, their argument was; [our judges] were following precedent and therefore they had to vote to keep legal even this gruesome partial birth abortion. So we have the greatest leaders, Christian pro-life leaders, in America who are saying, those judges were right [to keep PBA legal], they were supposed to follow precedent...

Judge Moore: No [that is, they should have rejected such evil precedent].

Bob: And [our Christian leaders said that these judges...] they gave us the rulings we wanted.

Judge Moore: Well let me tell you, I just recently wrote an article, and it's on World Net Daily, it was until it was taken off this week, they change every week of course. You could go to MoralLaw.org, our web site and you can look at our archives, and you can find the article, that was printed in the Washington Times, except they left the last part off, but, it's called Wayward Judges and Bad Precedent. And it shows how in the 1700s that precedent was defined as precedent as long as it didn't conflict with reason, logic or the law of God. And, "get this rule of precedent in the midst of exception, where the former determination is most evidently contrary to reason, much more if it be contrary to the Divine Law." In other words, when a ruling comes out of a court, which does not conform to the written law, made by legislators or Constitutional Conventions, it is not law, it is not precedent. You see, we have just changed the meaning of the word precedent in our time to mean that whatever somebody says, no matter if it contradicts the very thing they are sworn to interpret...

Bob: Even Do Not Murder, we still should abide by it.

Judge Moore: Yes...

Bob: Judge, we are out of time, but I want to let the audience know that the web site is MoralLaw.org. That's two l's, MoralLaw.org. Judge Roy Moore is the author of So Help Me God. Judge, I know how busy you are, but I would love to send you this DVD produced by Colorado Right to Life. It's called Focus on the Strategy and it has got excerpts from Alan Keyes, Judie Brown, and it's a powerful DVD and maybe someday we could talk about the pro-life strategy they are urging leaders to adopt.

Judge Moore: Ok.

Bob: Thank you so much Judge.

Judge Moore: Yes sir, thank you very much for having me.

Bob: May God bless you.

Judge Moore: God Bless you.

Bob: We appreciate that. It is an honor of course to have Judge Roy Moore on the show, and we are about out of time, so I want to urge you, if you haven't seen our sequel DVD, Focus on the Strategy II, please call us at 1-800-8Enyart, or go on line to KGOV.com, and get that DVD. Maybe you will be watching it the same time Judge Moore will be watching it. And we will send that off to him and pray that he will have the time to watch it. Maybe we could have him back on for a follow-up interview. Please pray for Judge Roy Moore, pray for us, and for Colorado Right to Life, and their banquet coming up on September 22. Have you bought your ticket yet? Or your whole table? And finally, Maranatha Christian Center, what a great school in Arvada, Maranatha!

Transcriber's note: The transcript has been edited slightly for readability. Transcript created by Ross Mountain Public Relations, Masonville, Colorado.