The news seems to have something new about Roy Moore every day. We’ve heard that when he was in his 30s, he was very anxious to get a number of young girls (the youngest being 14) to touch his naughties. We’ve heard he was on a banned list at a local mall because he harassed teenage girls. We’ve heard that he pulled teenage girls out of class at the local high school to ask them on dates. and we KNOW that his much younger wife was a classmate of one of his accusers.
So why are we not talking about what ELSE we know? Actually, since no one else wants to, allow me.
Roy is a fundamentalist Baptist. Anyone who has ever seen my Peaceful Christian Trading Card collection isn’t the least bit surprised by what Roy’s been up to. Indeed, I’m not at all surprised myself. I would have expected that he’d be up to such things. In the circles Roy travels in, old guys dating/molesting/even marrying much younger women is accepted as the norm, and that hasn’t changed for centuries. We know it hasn’t changed because in a poll taken of Alabama voters last week, those who consider themselves “Evangelicals” expressed even MORE support for Moore after the allegations surfaced. Again, I’d have expected precisely this kind of reaction. I’m rather shocked at those who seem dumbfounded by it.
Fundamentalists like Moore see women as property, and they see anyone old enough to reproduce as a “woman” for their purposes. We’ve seen it over and over again. We saw it with Tony Alamo. We saw it with Warren Jeffs and the FLDS. We’ve seen several examples from within the “Quiverfull” fundamentalist movement. This is who they are, this is what they believe, and this is how they live. When Hannity talked on his show about the activity with a 14 year old girl being “consensual”, a pretty good sized portion of his audience undoubtedly saw it, and see it, exactly that way. These people adhere to customs set up in an era where a girl would be lucky to have more than a few children and not die from the experience. It was also an age when people could expect to die in their 30s. A woman who starts producing children at 14, in fact, is GREAT for movements like the FLDS of Warren Jeffs, and the “Quiverfull” movement people like the Duggars of TV fame belong to. With our advances in medical sciences, a young girl can follow the Old Testament instruction to “be fruitful and multiply” many more times now than at any other era in history. And that’s just what people like Roy Moore want. This is why they seek not just to ban abortions, but to ban ANY form of contraceptives. This is why they seek to remove all traces of sex education from the schools. Teenage girls who aren’t pregnant aren’t doing what the Old Testament God expected them to do. And after what Eve did by listening to that serpent, all of her female descendants have a responsibility to adhere to that instruction, and do it without complaint.
This isn’t just about Roy Moore. This is how people like him see women, and the kind of society they want us to have. If you are one of those who was shocked by his behavior, stop being shocked, and start being angry. And, most importantly, get off your ass EVERY election and do something about it.
Moore got caught. But he has a whole bunch of brothers in influential positions already, many of them undoubtedly just as guilty – and as Godly – as Roy is. Stop them now, or you may not get another chance to do it.