Barry Moore has a new pitch for gay Americans and feminists: get on his side, because Islam is coming for your rights.
The Alabama congressman, who is running for U.S. Senate, made it on the Talk 99.5 show "Dixon & Vining" this week. 1819 News reported his remarks on October 15, 2026.
"I'm amazed at the feminists who are sitting on the sidelines, who are taking the side of some of these radical movements. The gay communities. Where are they at in the fight with us?"
He said even Bill Maher "will tell you" that women's rights and "the rights of gays in these communities are totally snuffed out" the minute radical Islam — 1819 News' bracketed gloss on his words — gains power. Then he went further and named the religion itself:
"I don't know how you define those lines when you see that the feminists, the trans, those communities are all on the side of Islam, this religion and ideology. I don't know how they all wind up on the same side of the issue, except that it's a spiritual battle."
So in Moore's telling, the enemy is not a terror group. It is "Islam, this religion." And the people who should be lining up behind him to fight it are gay Americans and women.
There's a problem with that. Moore has had his chance to protect those rights himself, and he said no.
He voted against gay marriage. Twice.
In 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately that the Court "should reconsider" other rulings too, naming Obergefell, the same-sex marriage case. Congress responded with the Respect for Marriage Act. Its job was simple: if the Court ever overturned same-sex marriage, the marriages people already have would still count.
The House voted on it twice. Barry Moore voted no both times:
- July 19, 2022 — the House passed it 267–157. Moore voted Nay.
- December 8, 2022 — the final version passed 258–169 and went to President Biden. Moore voted Nay again.
Dozens of House Republicans voted yes. Moore was not one of them. (We've laid out the same vote for Texas's Jake Ellzey, who also said no both times.)
That is the man now asking "the gay communities" where they are "in the fight with us." When their marriages were on the line, he was on the other side of the fight.
He cheered when women lost a right
Moore's complaint about "feminists … sitting on the sidelines" lands the same way.
When the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion in June 2022, Moore didn't mourn a lost right. He called the Dobbs decision "a huge victory for the pro-life movement and the Constitution" and "the single greatest step to protecting life in generations."
This year two of the country's leading anti-abortion groups, SBA Pro-Life America and National Right to Life, both endorsed him for Senate.
Moore wants women to fear losing their rights under someone else's religious law. He is the one who celebrated when they lost one under his.
"This religion" is the target, and it has been for years
The radio remarks are not a one-off. Moore has built a record around treating Islam itself as a threat:
- He joined the Sharia Free America Caucus. He is one of its announced members. In February 2026 the Council on American-Islamic Relations made it the first congressional caucus in its 32-year history to be named an anti-Muslim hate group, and said the caucus's bills "would effectively render the practice of Islam illegal."
- He wrote the CRUSADE Act. In May, Moore introduced a bill that would make religious workers seeking visas disavow sharia and take an oath to the Constitution before they could come here. The name stands for "Countering Radicalism Under Sharia and Defeating Extremism." A staff attorney for CAIR Alabama told the Alabama Political Reporter that crusader imagery "presents Islam as something to be liberated from or conquered."
- He introduced the Defeat Sharia Law in America Act in March, which would declare that discrimination "carried out through the implementation of Sharia Law" violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- He wrote that America is built on "Christian moral foundations." In a February op-ed under his own name, Moore said "Sharia law has no place in a nation built on Christian moral foundations, constitutional rights, and the rule of law." The First Amendment says the government picks no religion's foundations. That is the whole point of it.
Moore is part of a much bigger push. Republicans spent more than $10 million on TV ads this cycle attacking "Sharia" and Islam — about ten times what they spent in past cycles. And in Arkansas, we traced how a Sharia "takeover" panic started with five houses, two of them lived in by Christians.
The real choice for Alabama
Nobody in Alabama is being ruled by sharia. Same-sex couples in Alabama are married today because of a Supreme Court ruling that one of its own justices has asked to revisit, and Moore voted against the law that would keep those marriages standing if the Court does. Alabama women already lost the right to an abortion, and Moore called that a victory.
He is not asking gay Americans and women to join him in defending their rights. He is asking them to join him in a "spiritual battle" against their Muslim neighbors, while he votes against the rights he says he's worried about.
What the record shows
Barry Moore told Alabama radio listeners that gay and women's rights get "snuffed out" under radical Islam, asked where "the gay communities" and feminists were "in the fight with us," and called it a "spiritual battle" against "Islam, this religion." He voted against the Respect for Marriage Act both times the House took it up in 2022, and he called the decision that ended the federal right to an abortion "a huge victory."
