I am convinced that Evangelicals have so prostituted themselves on behalf of the Republican Party that they lost any sense of decency, ethics, and morality. Take Flip Benham, director of Operation Save America:
Judge Roy Moore graduated from West Point and then went on into the service, served in Vietnam and then came back and was in law school. All of the ladies, or many of the ladies that he possibly could have married were not available then, they were already married, maybe, somewhere. So he looked in a different direction and always with the [permission of the] parents of younger ladies … He did that because there is something about a purity of a young woman, there is something that is good, that’s true, that’s straight and he looked for that. (Crooks and Liars)
There’s something about the PURITY of a teen girl? Yes, he actually said that. Benham’s argument seems to be that all the older women were being fucked by men and were married, so Moore had to seek out teen girls who had not yet lost their virginity. We should be very glad that all the teen girls weren’t “impure.” Moore would have then had to seek out prepubescent girls to meet his purity standard.
old news. they sold their soul during the reagan administration, now they are just whores on the stroll for trump.
Yep. I trace their path back to 1979: Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell and the founding of the Immoral Majority. This is the first time I heard calls to take back America for God. In 1979, Polly and I attended an I Love America Rally — featuring Falwell — at the Ohio capital and later in the day at the Coliseum. I was all in…until I realized years later that Evangelicals had become shills and whores for the Republican Party. Today? Evangelicals are drunk with power and have no intention of getting sober. In doing so, they have lost any sense of moral authority. If they can’t see that Trump is a pig, there is no hope for them. Moore is just one more shovel of shit on the manure pile.
I think those supporting Moore know he’s a pervert, but they can’t afford to back down. If they did, they would also have to acknowledge Trump is a predator as well. And we all know that isn’t likely to happen.
It’s terrible to live in a nation where some people won’t put aside their politics in order to protect children.
The more I read about child abuse, the more disgusted at adult human beings I become. The protection of children definitely comes low down on the list of priorities; what comes MUCH higher up is, the reputation of the abuser, the reputation of the political group or religious group to which the abuser belongs. Especially, and overwhelmingly, the reputation of men: perish the thought that a MAN might be confronted about his abusive behaviour.
My mother is a Catholic convert, she converted in 1961, before marrying my father and having 3 children. The more the scandals have emerged about the Catholic church, the more defensive she has become, the more loyal, the more unquestioning. There is so much denial going on, and i think for similar reasons to the ones you describe here, Tammy: if she acknowledges that the Catholic church systematically covered up the abuse of children, she will have to admit (to herself, at least) that she has spent all her adult life backing an extremely dodgy horse.
And from what I can guage, her congregation is teeming with people who are in as much denial as she is. Lots of FAMILIES in her parish have stopped attending, completely, and when the priest went round to ask them why, the parents apparently all said, basically, “The Church has completely let down children in the most despicable way possible. We feel only disgust for it, and we won’t be back.” (I’m bowdlerizing some of this!). The priest went back to the Parish Council to report on his findings, at which point the members of the Parish Council (my mother included) went into even further denial, agreeing among themselves that these parents almost certainly didn’t mean what they said!
“There’s something about the purity of a teen girl”. You mean, “train a child up in the way that she should go?” or rather, train up a good little wifey who is uneducated and inexperienced in life so that you can control her every move? I’m glad my teen daughter is a staunch feminist.
Good on your daughter (and good on you for raising her right!) Too many teen girls are, frankly, weak, malleable and easily flattered and manipulated, making them easy prey for perverts like Moore (and this Benham character…wouldn’t surprise me anyway.) To some degree that’s not their fault, it’s a function of being young and inexperienced. But too many of them are also raised by parents who don’t teach them to be strong and confident enough to stand up for themselves. This is especially true among fundies, but it happens in plenty of non-fundie families as well, sadly.
In my experience, men like Moore and Benham also prefer teenage girls because, frankly, these “men” are nothing more than overgrown, emotionally stunted, mentally weak 13-year-old boys, and very immature 13-year-olds at that. They are terrified of adult women, because adult women are wise to their games, call them out on their bullshit, and expect them to behave like mature, responsible adults who treat women (and everyone else) with respect….something creatures like Moore and Benham are incapable of doing. At their age, they are probably incapable of growing up and evolving, so they only hope they have of getting laid is preying on teenage girls. (All the more reason that in a better world “men” like them would not be allowed out of their homes without supervision.)