Republicans just picked Roy Moore’s disgusting racist buddy for Chief Justice nominee

Pedophile Roy Moore may have lost his U.S. Senate bid last year but his former aide, who has become one of the most conservative, reactionary judges on the Alabama Supreme Court, has made it through the primary and is now one of two candidates to serve as the Chief Justice for the state’s highest court.

As a judge, Tom Parker makes no pretense of being fair-minded or interested in obeying rulings handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Instead, he is an activist who wants to push his faith-based views against abortion, against same-sex marriage (and LGBTQ people in general) and believes the wrong side won the Civil War, so you can imagine his views on the rights of minorities.

In 2004, when he first ran for the state Supreme Court, Parker distributed Confederate flags at a funeral as a promotion and insisted on his right to seek the support of people linked to the ways of the old South.

He was challenged on his right to use Confederate flags as a campaign symbol but won a legal challenge by claiming his first amendment right to free speech.

Just as Parker pushes his religious beliefs, he goes soft on crimes other judges might treat harshly.

While he uses the Constitution as written when it suits him, he plans to help change the existing law as chief justice.

Parker said during the primary campaign that President Trump is only one selection away from having a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and he wants Alabama to supply plenty of test cases driven by his religious beliefs that Trump’s court can use as precedent to undo what liberal judges have done in the past. 

Among the issues Parker believes are up for reevaluation is the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality decision (allowing same-sex marriages). He cites a pre-Civil War decision by the Wisconsin high court which refused to comply with a decision on slavery as a “model of what we need to see” in response to same-sex marriage.

“It’s time for state supreme courts to rise up and do their responsibility for this entire system we have nationally,” Parker said. “otherwise it’s just going to continue to get worse and worse.”  

A photograph has circulated showing Parker holding miniature Confederate flags while standing with the leader of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens on one side and the head of the League of the Old South.

Parker also advocates for the southern states to secede from the union.

Parker defeated the woman who was the Chief Justice in Alabama to move on to the November election, where he will face a Democrat, circuit court Judge Bob Vance, who in 2012 narrowly lost his first race to be chief justice to Roy Moore.

Moore was later forced off the court when he refused a federal court order to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, which also cost Parker his job as his lieutenant at the time.

When Moore was forced out as Chief Justice, Parker said it was unlawful. 

When Moore ran for the Senate, Parker campaigned for him and supported him even after a number of women came forward with credible claims he sought relations with them when they were underage.

It is unlikely Parker will become a national symbol of the racist past of the Old South as Moore was – but if he is elected it will be a black mark on a state that already has a reputation for holding on to the failed institutions and illegal regulations that are unfair to many of the state’s residents.

The state of Alabama dodged a bullet when Moore was defeated and now the same kind of coalition of enlightened voters needs to rise up to bury Parker and those like him who want to keep it in the legal, political and moral dark ages. 

Benjamin Locke

Benjamin Locke is a retired college professor with an undergraduate degree in Industrial Labor and Relations from Cornell University and an MBA from the European School of Management.