Roy S. Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, became a darling of the right wing in 2003 when he defied a federal court order to remove a 2.5-ton statue of the Ten Commandments from the state Supreme Court building, making headlines in the process. A state ethics panel removed him from the bench that same year, but since he was not impeached, he’s still eligible to hold office; he’s running this year for the position he lost almost a decade ago.

Roy Moore also happens to be a well-known homophobe. In a 2002 case in which a lesbian mother petitioned the court for custody of her children, for example, Moore issued a concurring opinion in which he called homosexuality a “sin,” cited Genesis and Leviticus, and claimed that the mother’s sexual orientation should be reason enough to deny her custody.

And in 2012, true to form, Moore is making anti-LGBT bigotry a talking point in his campaign. Moore railed against marriage equality at a Tea Party rally on Saturday, saying that it will result in the “ultimate destruction” of the United States. According to the Birmingham News, he told the crowd:

“We can’t keep going into debt. We can’t keep disparaging our military and promoting things like same-sex marriage, L-G-B-T. To hear the President of the United States say that we are promoting L-G-B-T. Let’s think about what that is: lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered rights.”

“Same-sex marriage will be the ultimate destruction of our country because it destroys the very foundation upon which this nation is based. Divisive, I’ve been accused of being divisive I’ll tell you what’s divisive. It’s this Democratic platform.”

Democratic Rep. Patricia Todd of Birmingham, the chair of Equality Alabama and the state’s first openly gay legislator, told the Birmingham News that Moore’s anti-LGBT comments were heartbreaking, divisive, and a distraction from the issues that matter most to Alabamians:

“It’s almost laughable to me. We’re going to bring the downfall of the country? When you have war and the economy? When you look at states that have same sex marriage, they’re all doing pretty good,” Todd said.

Watch Moore deliver his anti-gay comments below.