Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore said in a CNN interview Thursday that he will keep fighting same-sex marriage in Alabama because the issue is "about sexual preference overcoming an institution," not about the law.
Moore, appearing on CNN, told "New Day' host Chris Cuomo that he doesn't believe the U.S. Supreme has the right to "invent a definition of marriage," that would lead to same-sex marriage being the law of the land because the rights Americans enjoy come from God.
"You are putting God before the laws of man. That's not what we do in this country. That's not how it works," Cuomo countered.
When pressed by Cuomo over why he ordered probate judges in the state not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Moore responded, "I had to do this.... "This is not about racial discrimination, it's about sexual preference overcoming an institution which has existed in our state, in our United States for centuries and I think it's wrong."
Later in the interview Moore said he would choose not to follow a U.S. Supreme Court decision that says same sex couples have the same right to marry as heterosexual couples do. However, a few minutes after that Moore clarified his comment saying that he would make a decision on what he would do after the expected ruling is issued.
In an interview that at times was heated, Moore compared the current battle over whether states can ban a marriage that is not between a man and a woman to other landmark Supreme Court cases that, ultimately, became moot as times changed.
He pointed to the 1896 US Supreme Court ruling on Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal."
He also asked Cuomo what he would have done had he been a state supreme court justice after the ruling in Dred Scott vs. Sandford in which the Court held that African Americans could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court.
"I'm not the chief justice of Alabama," Cuomo said.
In the 25-minute interview Moore said it was his opinion that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was still in place because U.S. District Judge Callie Granade's decision to strike down the law was only her opinion, not law.
"No judge of the United States or the federal district court has the right to invent the definition of marriage, which is not even contained in the United States Constitution, and that's the problem," Moore said.