Roy Moore was removed from 1990s divorce case after he barred lesbian from seeing her children unsupervised

(CNN)Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for Senate in Alabama, ruled in a 1990s divorce case that a woman who had a lesbian affair couldn't visit her children unsupervised or with her partner, writing that the "minor children will be detrimentally affected by the present lifestyle" of the mother.

Moore, then a circuit judge, was ultimately removed from the case by an Alabama appeals court after the woman and her attorneys argued that he couldn't be impartial because of his views on homosexuality, according to  public court documents reviewed by CNN's KFile. 

 The case took place years before Moore garnered national attention for his public battle over a Ten Commandments statue and his more recent refusal to enforce the Supreme Court's ruling allowing same-sex marriage nationwide, both of which resulted in Moore's removal from the Alabama Supreme Court. It offers an early glimpse of how Moore's interpretation of the Bible and morality would inform his decisions as a public official. 

 

After sweeping Democratic victories in elections held Tuesday, national attention will now turn to the Alabama Senate race, where Moore facesDemocratic nominee Doug Jones in a special election to be held on December 12.

Representatives for Moore did not return requests for comment on this story.

 

In January 1996, Moore was presiding over a divorce case between Suzanne Scott Borden and her estranged husband. Borden and her attorneys, Laura Alfano and Janice Hart, initially asked Moore to recuse himself from the case because of his views on homosexuality. Borden's lawyers argued that, because of his "deeply fundamentalist religious faith," Moore had a "strong preconceived opinion of the Plaintiff because of her sexual orientation which would not leave the Court's mind perfectly open to conviction and would render the Court unable to exercise his functions impartially in this particular case."

Borden's lawyers also noted that one of them had previously worked with the ACLU, which was suing Moore at the time over his public display of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom.

Moore denied their motion to recuse himself and would go on to issue a temporary ruling that gave the father custody of the Bordens' two young children and ordered the mother to pay $126 a week in child support. He also barred Borden from visiting her children unsupervised, overnight or in the presence of her partner.

"The court strongly feels that the minor children will be detrimentally affected by the present lifestyle of [Mrs. Borden] who has engaged in a homosexual relationship during her marriage, forbidden both by the laws of the State of Alabama and the Laws of Nature," Moore wrote in his ruling.

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