A few dozen people took part in a rally this week on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol to speak out against Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore and other “heterosexists” who “hate homosexuals” and to support Democratic candidate Doug Jones. Speakers included a drag queen, transgender Miss Harvey McDaniel, and a woman wearing a clerical collar who was introduced as a reverend.
“When you talk about restricting religious freedom strictly to the Christian community, that means that the Jewish community is in trouble; the Muslim community’s in trouble; the Native Americans are going to have to start burying their artifacts again because they’re in trouble,” Ambrosia Starling, a drag queen, said at the rally. “That means that nobody gets respected except for Christians that hate homosexuals and look down their noses at other people.”
Starling is not new to the anti-Moore movement. In 2016, she was credited with being on the front line of the effort to discredit Moore because of his traditional views on marriage.
The Huffington Post reported in 2016:
But lately Starling has become more overtly political, joining the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and many other groups and individuals, speaking at rallies against Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who’d refused to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality and had ordered probate judges in the state to refuse to marry same-sex couples.
The female reverend at the rally said that Christianity is not connected to the founding of this country.
“Any person who claims that this nation’s laws are founded on Christian belief and connected with the tradition of Christianity is either so uneducated that I have to recommend an elementary school history book or is lying,” the woman said.
“Will we continue to allow a barrage of racists, classists, misogynists, heterosexists, homophobic, Islamaphobic vitriol spewed by politicians to define the course of Alabama history?” she said.
The Montgomery Advertiser reported that the two-hour rally drew about 70 people and was mostly focused on LGBT issues.
Starling said at the rally that organizers had reserved a seat for Gov. Kay Ivey, who said she is voting for Moore.
“Any time that she would like to change her mind and restore the dignity of good Southern women in Alabama and join us right here — we’re waiting for her,” Starling, who is a man, said.
Yellow Hammer News reported that, despite several women’s unsubstantiated claims that Moore made sexual advances to them decades ago when some of those accusers were teens, he has some advantages ahead of the December 12 special election to fill the vacant Senate seat of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Yellow Hammer News reported the Republican primary turnout was 423,282, while only 165,006 Democrats turned out. Moore almost beat all of the Democrats combined, with 164,524 votes.
Most polls had Jones closing the gap on Moore, and some showed him leading, but the latest polls show Moore has rebounded, Yellow Hammer News reported. A Change Research poll has Moore up 47 to 42 over Jones, seven percent are undecided and four percent will cast a write-in vote.