Breitbart News was all about their hero, ex-judge Roy Moore, raping children Thursday afternoon. I guess they think they scooped the legitimate story by Stephanie McCrummen, Beth Reinhard and Alice Crites in the Washington Post. To the Mercer family's neo-fascist gossip rag it's all a smear by Jeff Bezos... and they don't seem to mind child molestation at all anyway.
Moore was a 32 year old assistant D.A. in 1979 when he approached a mother with a 14 year old daughter and eventually proceeded to drive "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." 3 other local women-- then girls between the ages of 16 and 18-- reported Moore attempted to pick them up when he was in his 30s. He tried getting one drunk, although, by law, she was under the legal drinking age. Leigh Corfman, the 14 year old, is now a 53 year old Republican employee of a payday loan business who voted for Trump.
Neither Corfman nor any of the other women sought out The Post. While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore’s Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls. Over the ensuing three weeks, two Postreporters contacted and interviewed the four women. All were initially reluctant to speak publicly but chose to do so after multiple interviews, saying they thought it was important for people to know about their interactions with Moore. The women say they don’t know one another.
“I have prayed over this,” Corfman says, explaining why she decided to tell her story now. “All I know is that I can’t sit back and let this continue, let him continue without the mask being removed.”
...The legal age of consent in Alabama, then and now, is 16. Under Alabama law in 1979, and today, a person who is at least 19 years old who has sexual contact with someone between 12 and 16 years old has committed sexual abuse in the second degree. Sexual contact is defined as touching of sexual or intimate parts. The crime is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.
The law then and now also includes a section on enticing a child younger than 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts. That is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Republicans are having enough problems with the voters without another child sex scandal. McCain was quick to issue astatement: "The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying. He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of."
Republican Senate leadership is sure to make Bannon's head explode with their handling of the scandal. NRSC chair Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (whose home state is awash with scandals of Republican legislators molesting women), both called on Moore to step down from the race. McConnell-- well known for molesting young men in Louisville's Pickle Park-- said, "If these allegations are true, he must step aside." Gardner had a similar perspective: "The allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore are deeply troubling. If these allegations are found to be true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election." Susan Collins (R-ME) jump in as well. The Republican establishment urging Moore to drop out, wants Luther Strange, the swampy lobbyist incumbent who Moore beat in the primary, to run a write-in campaign against Democrat Doug Jones.
Philip Bump asked the big question: Will evangelical voters stick with Roy Moore after sexual assault allegations? "Roy Moore," he reminded his readers, "won the Republican nomination for the Senate seat in Alabama this year on the strength of his long-standing position as an advocate for hard-right conservative and evangelical values.
Recent history, though, suggests that he might not lose substantial evangelical support. That recent history is Donald Trump.
On Oct. 7, 2016, The Post had another scoop: Donald Trump had been recorded casually talking about sexual assault while preparing for a segment on Access Hollywood. When he denied having actually assaulted anyone during a presidential debate, a number of women came forward to say that he'd done to them precisely what he described in those audio recordings.
The result for Trump? He won more support from evangelical voters than any Republican since the question of religious identification began being asked.
Nearly half of Trump's support-- 46 percent-- identified as white evangelical Protestant.
In the wake of the Access Hollywood tape, PRRI released data showing that, for evangelical voters, moral rectitude had faded in importance since 2011. More than any other religious group, evangelicals said that someone who acts immorally in their personal lives can still serve morally in office.
Part of this is certainly a response to what was known about Trump. Evangelical voters supported Trump, so they were willing to say that any indiscretions were irrelevant.
But why did they support him so fervently?
Bump doesn't know the answer. He wants to believe it was all about Hillary, partially true-- but not the real picture. So I turned to someone who does, Frank Schaeffer, the son of Religious Right co-founder Francis Schaeffer.
"I grew up in the big time Evangelical subculture," he told me moments ago. "Roy Moore’s penchant for child sex/assault and alleged rape was all too typical. There was always some nasty little sex secret with a pastor going on. In public-- like Moore-- it was all about godly lives. In private it was all about double standards. From rape to who got abortions, to how evangelical churches protected their pedophile molesters, one story emerged: Protect the 'Work' at all costs! The children who a pastor rapes are told to keep silent less they 'Hurt the Lord’s Work.' And the children are blamed: 'Your skirt was too short! You led him astray!'
Roy Moore isn’t the abusive anomaly, he’s the patriarchal norm. This goes back to the Bible itself that puts brutal men in charge of churches where women must be silent. Voices raised in protest are exiled. Moore is a poster boy for evangelicals like Ralph Reed, who should be in jail for double dealings with the casino owners. He’s a poster boy for the professional hater Franklin Graham. Moore with his gun-waving, Bible-quoting is no different in hypocrisy than is Sarah Huckabee, as she quotes Jesus with one side of her mouth and lies for Trump daily out of the other. AWAY with these scum! Take back the House in 2018."
