Ousted judge to speak in Spokane

Three months after the Ten Commandments monument was hauled away from the rotunda of the Alabama State Courthouse, Roy Moore lost his job.

Suspended by a judicial ethics panel last November for having “placed himself above the law,” the former chief justice was catapulted into the national spotlight – heralded as a hero by conservative Christians, those who think President Bush is too centrist and others who don’t believe in the separation of church and state.

“Anybody who stands up for truth and justice in the public square and backs that stand with a willingness to sacrifice his vocation is a hero,” said John Beal of Spokane.

Inspired by Moore’s example, Beal and others in the Inland Northwest discovered a new fervor for their cause: “to restore the United States to ‘one nation under God.’ “

To promote this aim, Beal and other members of the Constitution Party of Washington, formerly known as the U.S. Taxpayers Party, have invited Moore to come to Spokane.

On Tuesday, the “Ten Commandments judge” will talk about “America’s call to honor God” at Shadle Park High School. Moore will be accompanied by Michael Peroutka, the party’s presidential candidate.

“Our nation cannot prosper unless we acknowledge God and his moral laws,” said Rob Peck, a member of the Constitution Party. By bringing Moore to Spokane, the party hopes to “wake people up and shake their thinking.”

“Constitutionally, there is no separation between church and state,” Peck argued. “There needs to be a joining of principles and morals to government.”

Even before the controversial monument, the ousted chief justice was known for his various displays of the Ten Commandments and for opening court sessions with prayers.

Moore spent eight months designing the controversial monument and helped move it into the building in the middle of the night in 2001. Two years later, a federal judge ruled the 2 1/2-ton granite monument was a violation of the separation of church and state, supported over the years in various court rulings that interpret the Constitution. The judge ordered its removal. As protesters prayed, the giant slab was wheeled away last summer to a storage room on instructions from Moore’s eight fellow justices.

One of the civil liberties groups that sued to have the monument moved was the Southern Poverty Law Center, the same organization that helped wage the lawsuit that brought an end to the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden, Idaho.

Key to Moore’s belief, as well as to his supporters’, is the idea that the United States is a Christian nation that must adhere to the Constitution and Bill of Rights as “interpreted according to the actual intent of the Founding Fathers.”

“America is bowing down to foreign gods and turning away from the one true God,” said Beal, a contractor who attends First Presbyterian Church in Spokane. “We start with God rather than man.”

“Our rights come from God,” said Neal Davis, another Constitution Party activist and a member of Christ Reform Church of Spokane, a small congregation in Otis Orchards.

The Constitution Party has about 300 members in Eastern Washington, according to Peck. The group used to be known as the U.S. Taxpayers Party but adopted the new name in 1998. In 1996, they backed gubernatorial candidate Ellen Craswell.

Many local members were drawn to the party’s ideology long before the group was established because of their own convictions about abortion, which they consider wrong.

The Constitution Party bills itself as the only political party that is “completely pro-life, anti-homosexual rights, pro-American sovereignty, anti-globalist, anti-free trade, anti-deindustrialization, anti-unchecked immigration, pro-Second Amendment, and against the constantly increasing expansion of unlawful police laws, in favor of a strong national defense and opposed to unconstitutional interventionism.”

According to Beal, members of the Constitution Party like George Bush and respect his Christianity, but feel that he and his Cabinet haven’t fulfilled their obligation to the Constitution.

“The real measure of government shouldn’t be the Republicans and Democrats,” said Peck, who attends Spokane Christian Center. “It should be the Bible and the Constitution.”