Anti-LGBT Jurist Roy Moore Leads New Poll in Alabama's U.S. Senate Race

The likelihood that Roy Moore, the supremely anti-LGBT former chief justice of Alabama, will be the state's next U.S. senator is looking greater and greater.

A new poll, posted today by Trafalgar Group, shows Moore with 35 percent support in the Republican primary, to be held next Tuesday, The Hill reports. His closest competitor in the field of nine Republicans is Luther Strange, with 23 percent. Strange, Alabama's former attorney general, currently holds the Senate seat, having been appointed by the governor to fill the vacancy left when Jeff Sessions moved from senator to U.S. attorney general, but this year's special election will pick a longer-term replacement. Mo Brooks, currently in the U.S. House, has 20 percent, and the others are in single digits.

There are also eight Democrats running, and both parties have scheduled runoff primary elections for September 26 in case no candidate emerges with a majority next week. The Democratic and Republican nominees will face each other December 12, but given the state's conservatism, the Republican will be likely to win.

It would be hard to find a candidate more conservative than Moore. As chief justice of the state Supreme Court, he had a long record of right-wing stances, including opposition to LGBT rights and abortion. He sought to block marriage equality in Alabama, both after a federal district judge ruled for it and after the U.S. Supreme Court did. He was removed from the court this year because of ethics violations related to his fight against marriage equality. He had been forced off the court once before, in 2003, over his refusal to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the court building, but was returned by voters in 2012.

Among his many outrageous statements are that marriage equality will "literally cause the destruction of our country or lead to the destruction of our country over the long run"; that transgender people have a mental disorder; and that actions against opponents of marriage equality are similar to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.