SAYING THE QUIET PART LOUD
Roy Moore Spokesman to CNN: He ‘Probably’ Thinks Being Gay Should Be Illegal
The GOP Senate candidate’s flack fumbled for answers on some of Moore’s past extremist claims: that being gay should be illegal; and that Muslims can’t serve in elected office.
CNN/Screenshot
Hours before the polls closed in Alabama’s special election race Tuesday, a spokesperson for Roy Moore asserted that the Republican nominee “probably” thinks homosexuality should be illegal.
“Homosexuality is a sin in the biblical sense,” Ted Crockett told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a bonkers interview. Although he could not provide a definitive answer on Moore’s stance, the candidate himself said in 2005, while chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, that “homosexual conduct should be illegal.”
Based on that 12-year-old clip, Tapper repeatedly pressed Crockett: “Here is my question for you, sir, does he think that homosexual conduct should be illegal? It’s a yes or no question.”
“Probably,” the spokesman responded.
Moore campaign strategist Dean Young appeared on MSNBC just moments after Crockett’s CNN interview. When asked whether Moore believes homosexuality should be illegal, Young said: “No, but he disagrees with it.”
Tapper went on to ask what the punishment should be for a person engaging in a homosexual relationship and Crockett simply responded: “It’s a sin, OK? That’s what it is.”
Crockett also responded with silence later in the interview when he was informed that a person does not need to swear on a Christian bible in order to be an elected official. (Moore has said that Muslims cannot serve in Congress because they would swear on the Quran rather than the bible.)
Monday evening at Moore’s final campaign event before the election, his discriminatory views on LGBT matters led to an emotional plea from 74-year-old Nathan Mathis.
The former county commissioner and state representative in Alabama showed up to the event with a photograph of his late daughter, a lesbian, who he said took her own life at the age of 23.
“I said bad things to my daughter myself, which I regret,” he emotionally told reporters. “But I can’t take back what happened to my daughter. Stuff like saying my daughter was a pervert, I’m sure that bothered her.”
“Roy Moore called my daughter a pervert... We don’t need a person like that representing us in Washington,” Mathis said of the Republican candidate. “That’s why I’m here.”