SUMMARY: Alabama high court justice Roy Moore spoke on Saturday about his controversial remarks in a lesbian mother's custody case.

Two days after the Judicial Inquiry Commission of Alabama dismissed a complaint filed against him, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Roy Moore, spoke on Saturday about his controversial remarks in a lesbian mother's custody case.

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund lodged the charge of ethical misconduct on Feb. 20, five days after Moore issued a 35-page court opinion calling homosexuality an "inherent evil" and citing arcane legal authorities such as Justinian, St. Thomas Aquinas and the authors of Genesis.

Moore's essay was written as a concurring opinion to a unanimous custody decision involving a lesbian mother. The main opinion, signed by the other eight justices, favored the father for a range of legal reasons that had nothing to do with sexual orientation.

On Saturday, the Associated Press reported, Moore spoke out for the first time since publishing his controversial comments, telling a crowd in Leeds, Ala., that he had nothing against homosexuals, but simply condemned homosexuality as a criminal and immoral act.

"What the law is, is what I must go by," explained Moore at an outdoor celebration of Medal of Honor winners. I think the biggest confusion people have is putting the person with the act. The person can be separated from the act and, in Alabama law, indeed is."

Moore, who is presently facing a federal suit for installing a two-ton monument to the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state Supreme Court building, excused his scriptural references by noting that "courts have forever quoted the Bible."

Lambda's complaint against Moore was the latest in a series that have come before the Judicial Inquiry Commission. "Relying on ancient sources of criminal law rather than current knowledge about gay and lesbian parents and their children, (Moore) emphasizes that, in his mind, any person in a lesbian or gay relationship is unfit to have custody," wrote Lambda Legal Director Ruth Harlow.

"This unyielding position is contrary to the case-by-case approach of Alabama family law and shows Chief Justice Moore's disregard for the requirements of his judicial office."

Moore has demonstrated, she continued "that he is unable to or unwilling to constrain the discharge of his judicial duties to the evidence before him and the rule of law, not religion or bias."

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