Wait a minute--Coral Ridge Ministries, a fundamentalist group, paid for that monument and got it installed in a state courthouse? I had not heard that before. Are you serious?
Coral Ridge Ministries, that which is affiliated with glorious TBN of Paul and Jan Crouch fame has long been the funding path from which all good things lowed for Roy Moore.
As a heart attack. They also filmed the installation, and sold videotapes of it to raise money for Judge Roy's legal fees.
Televangelist markets video of Moore placing monument
By Phillip Rawls
Associated Press Writer
11-18-2001
MONTGOMERY
Chief Justice Roy Moore didn't sneak his Ten Commandments monument into the State Judicial Building under the cover of darkness. He did it under the bright glare of TV lights and a camera.
The only known video of the Ten Commandments monument being installed in Montgomery is available from D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries.
"We have a long-standing relationship. We were informed and were happy to cover it for obvious reasons," said John Aman, spokesman for Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The footage of the installation in the State Judicial Building was included in one of Kennedy's weekly TV shows. Video cassette copies of that show are offered by Kennedy's organization for a suggested donation of $19.
The relationship between Moore and Kennedy, a Presbyterian minister and televangelist, has been growing since 1995, when Moore was a circuit judge in Gadsden and got sued for displaying a homemade wooden plaque of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. Coral Ridge Ministries' Web site notes that it donated $130,000 to help cover Moore's legal expenses stemming from that litigation and an investigation by the state's Judicial Inquiry Commission.
Now the organization is offering to help Moore again with legal expenses as he fights two lawsuits challenging the Ten Commandments monument in the State Judicial Building. Aman said Coral Ridge Ministries believes the lawsuits threaten people's ability to acknowledge God in public places.
Moore promised in his 2000 campaign for chief justice that if he got elected, he would display the Ten Commandments in the State Judicial Building. But when he took office in January 2000, he put his famous plaque in the reception area of his office suite, not in a spot visible to the public.
Moore allowed Coral Ridge Ministries to make a video of that display when video crews from Alabama TV stations were turned away.
At the same time he was moving into his new office, he was also lining up Clark Memorials in Birmingham to make a washing machine-sized monument of the Ten Commandments, but the public wouldn't know about it until seven months later.
The monument was delivered to the State Judicial Building in the late hours of July 31 and installed in the rotunda. Moore pulled off a red drape to unveil the monument Aug. 1.
Critics immediately started talking about Moore sneaking the monument into the building without the knowledge of the other justices and after they had left for the evening.
There was no publicly available video of the installation until Kennedy aired it on his weekly television show, "The Coral Ridge Hour," on Oct. 14. The video shot by his organization shows the 5,280-pound monument being made in Birmingham, the truck carrying it to Montgomery, and Moore, wearing a white T-shirt, helping wheel the base into place in Montgomery.
Moore's spokesman, Scott Barnett, said he saw no other cameras at the installation.
At the unveiling of the monument on Aug. 1, Moore's longtime attorney, Stephen Melchior, predicted, "We anticipate there will be a battle."
The battle began Oct. 30 when the Southern Poverty Law Center, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and the American Civil Liberties Union filed two lawsuits challenging the placement of the monument. Those lawsuits are pending in federal court before U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson.
Montgomery attorney Steve Glassroth, who filed one of the suits, said he never knew the video existed.
"I thought it was all done under the darkness of night," he said.
It remains to be seen whether the video will cause any more legal fights for Moore.
Jim Sumner, executive director of the State Ethics Commission, said he can't comment on a specific matter, but the state ethics law says no public official shall use state facilities under his control for the private benefit or business benefit of another person.
On the Net: A HREF="
http://www.coralridge.org">www.coralridge.org