SUMMARY: The U.S. Supreme Court let stand an appellate ruling barring a governor from erecting a Ten Commandments monument--also, update from Alabama.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a federal appellate ruling barring the governor of Indiana from erecting a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol.

The decision not to take the case comes at a time when Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is facing a federal lawsuit challenging his own Ten Commandments monument, a two-ton monolith which he placed last summer in the rotunda of the state supreme court house. Moore and his religious views have been under new attack since February 15, when he issued a 35-page condemnation of homosexuality in the case of a lesbian seeking child custody.

According to the Birmingham News and other local press reports, Moore may have his eye on higher office, specifically the governor's chair. A December article in Church and State says Moore capitalized on a 1997 Ten Commandments incident to win election to the state supreme court in November, 2000. Once elected, the article says Moore waited until the evening of July 31 to install his Ten Commandments monument and neglected to consult his colleagues on the bench. As chief justice, Moore told the L.A. Times last year, "I am the highest legal authority in the state. And I wanted it there."

Backed by the Christian right, Moore has appeared as a lecturer and panelist in several extremely conservative venues, including a short-wave radio program hosted by Rev. Pete Peters, a man described by the Anti-Defamation League as an openly anti-Semitic, anti-gay white supremacist.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State filed a federal suit against Moore and his display last October 30. But the publicity might rebound to his advantage in a state where a poll by the Mobile Register revealed that 78 percent of respondents supported mounting the Commandments in public.

Moore's actions on February 15, however, might backfire. In a 35-page concurring opinion to the court's 9-0 ruling against the lesbian, Moore called homosexuality "inherently evil," and "a violation of nature's law." Anyone admitting to such activity, he wrote, was automatically unfit to parent.

As observers in the press have noted, the main opinion turned on a legal technicality, whether the appellate court that ruled for the lesbian mother had the authority to consider new evidence in the case. Moore's opinion has no judicial weight, and there was no legal reason to draft it. The anti-gay polemic was greeted with calls for Moore's removal from the bench by gay rights leaders and others. In addition, Congressman Alvin Holmes of Montgomery is asking for an investigation by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission.