The remarks of Rick Scarborough, President of Vision America, given at the Rally in support of Chief Justice Roy Moore, Montgomery, AL

Saturday, August 16, 2003

Opening Remarks

MR. RICK SCARBOROUGH: Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to say before we go any further, how grateful I am to Jason Greely (sp), the members of the First Baptist Church of – (unintelligible) – (their drive/tribe ?) and others comprise the Ten Commandants’ (drive?). Haven’t they done an outstanding job?

(Cheers, applause.)

MR. SCARBOROUGH: We’re so grateful for this incredible music, and there is more to come.

Why are we here? We’re here because we believe our God has been insulted.

(Amens.)

We’re not here to defend him, our God does not need our defense. But we are here today to honor him and to say to a (great, reigning, watching ?) nation that we need this judicial tyranny that has been stealing from us systematically our values, has now drawn a line in the sand, and we cannot allow this issue to go any further of expunging God from our culture.

(Cheers and applause.)

In 1962 we were told you cannot pray in the public schools. In 1963 we were told you cannot read your bibles in the public schools. In 1973, after virtually every state in this country rejected abortion on demand through referendum and votes and after the Supreme Court justice system informed us that a clause had been found in the Constitution that had never been seen before and that suddenly women in this country had the right to abort their children, and now 43 million abortions later, here we stand. God help us.

In 1980 we were told, you cannot post the Ten Commandments. The overwhelming majority of the American people believe that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of our law.

(Cheers, applause.)

In June this year we were told that in the state of Texas our law banning sodomy was unconstitutional, that mankind had a right to defile themselves and that the state did not have a right to impose a law. If we ever wondered where this judicial tyranny would go and why we must come down to a foundation of moral law, it is illustrated by the action of Sandra Day O’Connor, who reversed her own vote after a period of 17 years. If law means what a justice says it means, then we are adrift and we will be destroyed, morally.

And then finally, one day somewhere in this land an elected official in the highest office to which he can aspire in the judiciary, Chief Justice Roy Moore finally (swore?) – (cheers and applause) -- and said, enough is enough.

(Cheers and applause.)

And so that’s why we’re here today, to say to this chief justice, to every member of the press, to the entire country, we’re here to say that we believe this illicit ruling by Myron Thompson declaring that the state cannot acknowledge God, confirmed by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Federal Appeals, overruling the will of the majority of citizens in Alabama who elected this chief justice -- (cheers) -- and forcing them now to deny his God and his oath of office, is simply too far.

We have a wonderful host of speakers. I want you to be prayerful as we walk through the agenda today. Let us begin by invoking God’s presence, by acknowledging our allegiance to the flag of the United States of America --

After remarks from other speakers, Rev. Rick Scarborough provided the following concluding remarks

MR. RICK SCARBOROUGH: -- (now we’re ?) going to give you marching orders, a charge, on behalf of our great Almighty God. I’m holding a copy of a statement that was given within 30 minutes after the chief announced his intentions. I was there in the rotunda, as were some of you, and in less than 30 minutes Associate Justice Houston (sp) released his statement and he quoted from United States versus Lee, he said, “No man in this country is so high that he is above the law. No officer of the law may set that law in defiance with impunity. All the offices of the government from the highest to the lowest, are the creatures of the law and are bound to obey it.” And he proceeded to say that he and the other justices would now meet to determine what would happen to this chief justice.

I am urging every one of you Alabama citizens to write, to call and to serve rebuke to this judge, who’s acting in an unlawful manner, and demanding that the chief justices obey God. Isn’t it curious today that as he calls for the judicial inquiry to rule upon this chief justice, that the very ones that are demanding that we not acknowledge God, are being celebrated and one chief justice who finally said, enough is enough, is being threatened for removal.

Now I say to you, we are meeting a generation that is calling evil good and good evil. Thomas Jefferson said it is a very dangerous doctrine to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions. It is one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. The Constitution has erected no such tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despot.

To Alabama Governor Riley, I read you a quote from Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson responded to a court decision that he deemed to be unconstitutional and here is what he said, “The court has made its decision. Now let’s see the court enforce it.” I call upon the executive branch of this state to do that which is righteous in honor of God. I call those who claim to know God and love God to live the truth and not just give lip service to the truth.

(Cheers and applause.)

I urge you, if you did not get a card, then you write in essence your own on the back of the program. You get this to us. We’re going to turn them in by the thousands and I want to say this, as you give us your address, I will send you a copy of the poem that the chief justice just quoted to us that we all need to memorize. I’ll see that this is mailed to you, if we have your name and address and we will forward this information, as well, to the Legal Defense Fund, Moral Foundations for Law.

This chief should not have to be looking over his shoulder to see if he can pay those who represent him.

The ACLU and Southern Poverty Law are being paid by the federal government. Not one dime, not one dime of this chief’s defense has been paid for by the citizens of Alabama, but rather through the free-will offerings of people like you and me. And now it is time for us to step up to the plate. One of the ways you can step up is by helping us today as the buckets again come through. I’m telling you, folk, every person in this room has a vested interest in assisting in this battle.

Isn’t it amazing that what has made so many Christians in this state quake and the entire bench quake, other than the chief, is the threat that it may cost Alabama dollars? How much is your liberty worth? What price is your price? Someone railed at me and said, well, do you think the citizens of Alabama should pay out of their tax dollars for this chief justice’s law breaking? And my answer to that is, do you think I should pay my tax dollars to support planned parenthood and the death of the innocent?

(Cheers and applause.)

It is time for you to stand up and to speak up. In one generation we’ve gone from a generation where God was honored and our streets were safe; where the flag was so revered it was raised in the morning and saluted, and removed every evening, and protected lest the dew fall upon that sacred symbol of our freedom; where divorce was rare and lifelong marriage was not; where men stood when a lady entered the room and opened doors for them when they exited, out of respect; where children seldom even considered showing disrespect for their elders; where unwed motherhood was considered shameful out of reverence for God’s standards and concern for the offspring; where men understood the importance of fatherhood and took seriously their responsibility to care for their children; where children were safe at home and school; where prayer and Bible study at home and school was considered a good thing; where abortion was illegal, immoral and rare; where experimenting on human beings was the action of Nazi barbarians and justification for war.

Never in my lifetime could I have imagined that I would live to see the day when we would be debating the cloning of human beings for body parts. But here we are. Sitcoms once reflected the prevailing moral code based upon the Judeo-Christian ethic. Actors playing the role of a married couple wore pajamas when they retired to twin beds, separated by a nightstand, lest the viewing public think they might be living in an adulterous or simulating an adulterous affair. Homosexuality was a crime and homosexuals restricted their activities to the shadows. Decent people went to church and virtually every family had a family Bible and a family altar and they practiced it.

But that generation is dying and a new generation is taking its place comprised in large measure by people who have never been to church nor read a Bible; in large measure have never known their father, with out-of-wedlock births now reaching 50 percent nationwide and exceeding 70 percent in black America; who have been taught there is no God, the Bible is a myth and the church is a crutch; who have witnessed the loss of one-third of their classmates as their mother’s have expressed freedom as their right to choose an abortion; who have entered a public school system that in many ways and places is more like a war zone than a place of higher learning, where their own classmates are being murdered. They find themselves in schools that are facilitators of fornication rather than institutions of higher learning, where the theory of evolution is taught as fact and the fact of God is taught as theory; whose concept of entertainment has been shaped by a movie industry that peddles gratuitous sex and endless violence, and a music industry that feeds non-stop nihilistic pleasure complete with pornographic images so they can live out their thought life before the screen.

How do we stop this slide? How do we see this immorality turned around? A militant and largely godless minority in this country made a commitment following World War II to use their collective influence to divorce this country from its constitutional foundation and its Judeo-Christian heritage, offering in its place the map of separation and declaring that the state was omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.

They promised a utopian, secular society free of the bondage of external religious trappings. They continued the legacy of Thomas Paine in the French Revolution. Since they lacked the numbers to do their work at the ballot box and through representative government, they focused on an active judiciary while Johnny came marching home again, hooray, hooray, to rebuild his life in his beloved America, focusing on family, career and community. These self-appointed saviors of American society focused on our institutions of higher learning, the media, but especially the courts.

Prayer was ruled unconstitutional in 1962, Bible reading in 1963, abortion on demand in 1973, the Ten Commandments in 1980. Now the Pledge is under attack if we recite, “One nation under God.” Now we find that the 11th Circuit Court, in agreement with Myron Thompson of the Middle District Court of Alabama, has declared you cannot acknowledge God in the public place. And I say to you, “Enough is enough.”

(Cheers and applause.)

Isn’t it interesting that the judge is sitting in judgment over the chief justice compared him in the court proceedings to thinking he was like Lester Maddox or George Wallace or others of the southern judges. They declared, you’re not going to stand on states’ rights, just like we proved before, we will prove again. But what they failed to realize was when the Supreme Court stepped over states’ rights to give black Americans their just civil rights, what gave them the moral authority was the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights among which life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The justice system rightly cited divine right, moral law, that stepped over states’ rights and they were right.

(Cheers and applause.)

Forty years later, the Eleventh Circuit, federal bureau’s court, justices appointed for life, accountable in their minds to no one, have now said you don’t have a higher moral law to turn to. Had their position been the position of the courts 40 years ago, there would have been no civil rights movement -- only tyranny.

I submit to you, it is God who has given us this wonderful nation. It is God that gives the government legitimacy and it is we the people who declare that we give them the right to govern us, and it is time for you and I to do everything in a lawful manner at our disposal to stand up, speak up and refuse to give up, for if the church of Jesus Christ sleeps through this one, it is over for this country. I believe that this battle, if not the decisive battle of a 40-year culture war, is certainly a decisive battle. Our children, should Jesus tarry, will judge us by what we do on this issue.

I call on the United States of America and the church of the living God in this nation, I call on every pastor of every church who claims to believe the Bible, to get out of your lethargy and to stand up and speak up. (Cheers and applause.) This nation is like she is because the church has largely fallen asleep. The church has largely fallen asleep because the pastors have concentrated for too long on how to build their own flock instead of how to be the salt and the light.

And I am calling pastors across this land to join us in a movement of pastors again declaring the truth. It is time pastors for you to stand up, to speak up and refuse to give up. It would be a tragedy if this chief justice, a modern day Daniel, is destroyed by the juggernaut of evil that is now (vimming ?) its venom on him We must surround him, not only with our prayers, but with our persons. I declare that in the name of our Lord.

(Cheers and applause.)

Lawrence White, come and close this convocation.