Is there a deeper problem here?
Nov 13, 2017, 5:59 AM | Updated: 7:47 am
Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Alabama Senate Candidate Roy Moore has said as clearly as he can that he never committed the 1979 sexual assault described in The Washington Post.
Ross: We’re talkin’ 30 years people
He even agreed anyone who did what he’s accused of doing has no business serving in the Senate. But he said the bottom line is he didn’t do it.
Yet, it doesn’t seem likely that the women who finally decided to speak out would just make this up. And if their stories are true, how could a committed Evangelical Christian like Roy Moore not be eaten up with guilt — knowing what he’d done?
Well, a piece in the LA Times by Kathryn Brightbill, who grew up as an evangelical, says there’s an explanation, and it isn’t pretty.
She now works at the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, representing home-schooled children who fall through the cracks. She writes that in the world where she grew up, 14-year-old girls commonly courted adult men.
“Women raised in … fundamentalism have for years discussed the normalization of child sexual abuse … but until the Roy Moore story broke, mainstream American society barely paid attention…”
Although America did get a glimpse of it in 2009 when Phil Robertson – patriarch of Duck Dynasty – gave a speech about the ideal woman.
“If she picks your ducks, now that’s a woman,” he said. Adding, “They got to where they’re getting hard to find, mainly because these boys are waiting ‘til they get to be about 20 years old before they marry ‘em. Look, you wait ’til they get to be 20 years old the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They’ll pick your ducks.”
He did say that you should ask her parents first.
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