Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore on more than one occasion cited murderous cult leader Charles Manson’s “family” to argue why gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married.
Moore, a religious conservative crusader whose Senate campaign is on the rocks because multiple women have accused him of inappropriate sexual conduct with them (many when they were teenagers), argued on at least two occasions that legalizing gay marriage would lead to polygamy and allow mass murdering Manson to marry multiple women from his cult.
“It’s not a question of equal protection of law. Every person has the right to marry someone of the opposite gender. That’s always been true, that’s equal protection,” Moore said in early 2015 during a radio interview. “You can’t extend equal protection, say everybody’s got a right to marry anybody they want to, because then you can say Charles Manson had a family and we’ve got to recognize that family.”
Manson, a cult leader whose followers gruesomely murdered seven people including pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969, died on Sunday.
That radio interview isn’t the only time Moore used Manson to argue against gay marriage.
During an interview for the 2015 documentary “The State of Being Human,” Moore argued with documentarian David Merriman that gay marriage would lead to Manson-like polygamy.
“You know who Charles Manson was? He had a family didn’t he? Well, it was called Charles Manson’s family, wasn’t it?” he said during a back-and-forth with Merriman. “But could they get married?”
When Merriman conceded Manson would legally have been allowed to marry one of his female followers, Moore fired back: “Why not two of them?”
That’s not the only slippery slope argument Moore made in his interview with Merriman — he also referenced bestiality and father-daughter incest.
“I have horses. My wife has horses. She loves her horse. Should she be able to marry her horse?” he asked.
Roy Moore from Dmi Video’s on Vimeo.
“Some men unfortunately love their daughter. And when she becomes of age, should they be able to get married?” he asked a minute later. “If it’s based on love, why shouldn’t a man be able to marry his daughter, and why shouldn’t a woman be able to marry her son?”
One woman has accused Moore of initiating a sexual encounter with her when she was 14 years old, while another has accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 16. Other women have accused Moore of making passes at them or taking them out on dates when they were teens, or groping them without their consent.
The Democratic outside group American Bridge found the references and shared them with TPM. Moore’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment on his remarks.
