Under Donald Trump, America has ceded morality and values faster than many could have envisioned. If America now elects Roy Moore to the United States Senate, it will destroy America’s moral standing in the world — perhaps forever.
I am struggling.
I am struggling with the recent news out of Hollywood, about the continuing scandals of Donald Trump, with the continuing mass gun violence in America. I am struggling with how to conduct my day-to-day life with so much cruelty running throughout our society. I am struggling simply to find the words to write this piece.
And yet even as much as I am struggling with these revelations and realizations, I thought that maybe we had hit absolute rock bottom with respect to the erosion of American politics and values. I thought that Donald Trump, bragging about being able to sexually assault women seemingly at will in the now-infamous Access Hollywood video and still becoming the President of the United States, would surely be the bottom of the proverbial barrel when it came our country’s ability to look past the most grievous misdeeds of its citizens. And then came Judge Roy Moore, and the bottom sank to a grotesque new low.
As most of you probably know by now, Roy Moore — former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who has now twice been thrown off the bench for various ethics and legal violations— is poised to win the US Senate seat vacated by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, through a special election scheduled for next month. And now, as reported by The Washington Post, Moore has now been accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl when he himself was 32 years of age. I’m not going to paraphrase the article; the words of the actual victim, Leigh Corfman, must stand out alone:
Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.
“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.
It’s impossible for me to remain impartial after both reading about this and hearing about it in the media for the last few days. It is one of the most vile stories I have come across. Naturally, Moore, as has been consistent with the Trump Administration since Day One, derided the article as “fake news”:
In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations.
“These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign,” Moore, now 70, said.
The campaign said in a subsequent statement that if the allegations were true they would have surfaced during his previous campaigns, adding “this garbage is the very definition of fake news.”
This is probably not the most surprising revelation from the article, or from Moore’s campaign. But I will tell you what is shocking, and which threatens to destroy the very core of American morality.
I Don’t Care if He Is a Pedophile. I’m Voting for Him Anyway.
I want you to read that tweet. And reread it. Multiple times if you need to. And then I want you to isolate this part of it: “Alabama Bibb County Republican chairman Jerry Pow tells me, “‘I would vote for Judge Moore because I wouldn’t want to vote for Doug.’”
Sit back and just try to absorb the gravity of this statement. This is an official representative of the Republican Party of the United States, going on the record to state that he would rather vote for an accused pedophile — even if he is GUILTY — than for a candidate from the other major party. I am sitting here, reading these words and writing this piece in utter disbelief, shock, and horror. It is impossible for me to wrap my head around this idea. And he’s not even the only one attempting to mount some kind of sick, twisted response to Moore’s actions:
I am now sitting here half laughing at how ludicrous this supposed “defense” is! “Well, she said he may have TRIED [to get Corfman to touch his genitals].” So just trying to get an underage girl to touch your genitalia, but not actually having her touch them, makes it all okay!! Hall even states that there’s nothing wrong with a single man in his thirties asking an underage girl out for a date. I am failing to find suitable words for all of this.
But the holy grail — pun intended, as you will see — and worst of the worst defense for why a pedophile should be elected to the United States Senate may come from Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler. Behold:
“Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus,” Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler told The Washington Examiner. “There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.”
In the Bible, Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Joseph became her husband. Beliefs about the specific story of Joseph and Mary and Jesus’ birth vary widely in Christian history and across traditions. Mary is referred to in scripture as a virgin, but there is disagreement about what that means. Generally, however, Christians believe that Mary was a virgin when he was born. Joseph is usually referred to as Jesus’ “father” or a father figure.
The Bible does not state Mary and Joseph’s specific ages, but she is usually understood to be a teenager, and Joseph was an adult.
In my very last piece, I wrote specifically about how our current crop of conservative Christian crusaders has twisted the ideals of God, religion, and Christianity to benefit very specific groups of people, and this is the ultimate example of them doing just that! We are now taking one of the most sacred stories of the Bible — the story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ — and twisting it into an actual defense of one of the most heinous violations of the human body which can be committed by another human being. I may know very little about Christianity from a personal standpoint, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that it never represented or defended pedophilia!!! And yet that is exactly what at least certain members of the Republican Party are doing. They are willing to put a pedophile into office just to prevent a Democrat from winning another Senate Seat. This is as disgusting as it gets — at least, I hope.
But we need to extrapolate further than the Alabama Senate race, and consider the ramifications if Moore actually wins despite the nearly airtight allegations of pedophilia raised against him. If Moore actually wins the Senate race, and the Republican Party continues to defend and support Moore, we will have perhaps set the ultimate precedent with respect to accusations of pedophilia nationwide, and perhaps even worldwide. Remember those “religious freedom” laws that we were talking about before, which have sprung up around the country to protect the sacred rights of those who want to deny reproductive health care to women or a homosexual couple the right to a wedding cake? What if — what if — those same religious freedom laws could be extended to child pornography or — even more horrendous — actual sex crimes against underage victims?
Because we now have the “If Joseph and Mary could do it, why can’t we?” defense. Right out there in the open. Suppose just for a moment that a forty-ish year-old man lured your 14-year-old daughter out after dinner to a motel room and forced himself into her. Now, suppose that this happened in a religious freedom state. Thanks to Judge Roy Moore and these God-loving, Christian conservative Republican leaders, he now has the option of saying he has a sincerely held religious belief — that Joseph and Mary were blessed by God to have a sexual relationship despite their significant age difference — that the relationship was sound under the eyes of God. And because religious freedom laws tend to be written so broadly, they have the potential of excusing virtually any type of scandalous or immoral behavior as acceptable under the eyes of God. It has the potential to undo the entire United States legal code with respect to a whole host of crimes, including sex crimes against children, because we now have the Roy Moore Defense against the most repulsive crime that can be committed upon a person. If this were to bear out sometime in the near future, imagine the damage this would do to the entire criminal justice system and to the future victims of such crimes.
America’s Moral Fabric on the Brink
None of the above is hyperbole; because of the way the idea of Christianity has been twisted and contorted, even in the face of pedophilia likely committed by Judge Roy Moore, this is a realistic legal outcome, thanks to the introduction of religious freedom laws. As pointed out in the last piece, this twisting of Christianity has turned it into a weapon used to victimize anyone in society who does not subscribe to a modern-day conservative extremist’s supposed morals and values. And now those “values” extend to defending — even excusing — the act of sexual molestation against a child.
That some within conservative and Republican circles would take the crime of sexual molestation against an underage girl is the ultimate manifestation of this ideology. And we absolutely cannot allow it because our country’s entire moral standing is at stake. If Judge Roy Moore is able to win election to one of the most sacred positions within the United States government, even after the revelations of pedophilia leveled against him, then we will truly have abdicated our moral authority. No longer will the United States of America have any grounds upon which to level criticism on foreign governments for alleged human rights abuses, because we will have become a safe haven for the worst human rights abuses which can be committed upon humanity. If Roy Moore is elected to the Senate, the rest of the world will condemn the United States in disbelief and shame for having allowed it to happen. Donald Trump may have opened a crack in the dam of morality when he was elected to the presidency after bragging about sexual assault on video. But Moore has the potential to unleash the floodwaters full force against the very idea of American morality for years and years to come. This cannot happen. If it does, then the United States may truly be finished as a nation.