Roy Moore Says Gay Marriage Ruling Is 'Even Worse' Than 1857 Pro-Slavery Decision

Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore said he believes a Supreme Court ruling allowing loving adults to marry is worse than the court’s 1857 decision that upheld slavery.

In a 2016 podcast interview surfaced by Talking Points Memo on Tuesday, Moore said the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision ― which held that black people were property and could not be citizens ― was a better ruling than the 2015 Supreme Court case allowing gay marriage nationwide. Scholars regard the Dred Scott decision as one of the Supreme Court’s worst.

Moore, who in 2015 was Alabama’s chief justice, ordered state judges to defy the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that allowed gay marriage, and he continued to enforce Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage. The stance ultimately led to Moore’s removal from the Alabama Supreme Court.

After his ouster, Moore spoke to “Here I Stand,” a podcast run by the conservative Christian Emergency League, to voice his displeasure and to make the gross comparison of the gay marriage ruling with the slavery decision.

“I was simply pointing out that in 1857, the United States Supreme Court did rule that black people were property,” Moore said on the podcast. “And of course that contradicted the Constitution and it took a civil war to overturn it.

“But this ruling in Obergefell is even worse in a sense because it forces not only people to recognize marriage other than the institution ordained of God and recognized by nearly every state in the union, it says that you now must do away with the definition of marriage and make it between two persons of the same gender.”

Moore also compared the gay marriage ruling with the Dred Scott decision in a 2015 interview with CNN.

Alabama voters shouldn’t be surprised by Moore’s ridiculous opinion. In June 2015, Moore said enforcing the Supreme Court’s gay-marriage ruling was the equivalent of following immoral laws in Germany during World War II.

“Could I do this if I were in Nuremberg ― say that I was following the orders of the highest authority to kill Jews?” Moore told an AL.com reporter. “Could I say I was ordered to do so?”

When a reporter reminded Moore than the Nuremberg trials were about killing humans, not gay marriage, Moore responded: “Is there a difference?”

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.