Roy Moore and Christian Hypocrisy

Alabama has a special Senate election in December for the Jeff Sessions seat. Governor Robert Bentley had appointed Luther Strange to the seat. Strange was the state attorney general who just happened to have been investigating one Robert Bentley for misusing state resources to cover up an illicit sexual affair. A cynic might have thought Bentley was trying to rid himself of Strange. The Bible-thumping governor was soon forced to resign anyway.

Also a gun thumper

Roy Moore is a former Alabama chief justice. A bigger Bible-thumper. He was removed from the bench, twice. First for installing and then refusing to remove a huge monument of the Ten Commandments. Elected again, he was removed again, this time for instructing state judges to defy the law of the land on gay marriage.

Moore challenged Strange in the primary for the Senate nomination. Trump endorsed Strange. But Moore campaigned on the idea that Strange was not pro-Trump enough. Alabama is big-time Trump country (well, the white parts). Moore won the primary. Now his main campaign theme is that America isn’t godly enough.

And now it turns out that this Ten Commandments lover also loves molesting underage girls. The woman’s account of what he did when she was 14 and he was 32 is both disgusting and thoroughly credible. It has been corroborated by testimonies from several others about their encounters with Moore in their teens. Everyone who has actually looked at the evidence finds it highly persuasive.

Moore denies it, calling it a politically motivated attack. (The woman is actually a Republican Trump voter.) In other words, the fake “fake news” defense. Anything that’s reported that you don’t like is “fake news.”

Religion’s defenders claim that it’s the basis for morality. Yet so often it’s a cloak for immorality. How often the biggest Bible thumpers are secretly sex perverts. The pedophile Roy Moore is but the latest in a long disgraceful parade.

I’ve written recently how political partisanship has come to trump all other tribalisms in America. It even trumps religion. In polls, evangelical Christians used to be the most likely to say personal morality is important in a public office-holder. Now they’re the least likely! How else can they reconcile voting for an admitted sexual predator, who boasted he could “grab them by the pussy”?

State Auditor Jim Ziegler says what Moore did with that 14-year-old was actually okay because similar stories are found in the Bible, like that of Joseph and Mary. And I have said that religion warps the brain.

The Democratic Senate candidate in Alabama, Doug Jones, seems to be an excellent man. Certainly not a vile reptile like Roy Moore. Has America really sunk so low that Moore wins?

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