Yesterday I wrote that Roy Moore’s behavior was in keeping with hardcore conservative evangelical culture of sanctioned patriarchal sexual abuse. I have also stated that the release of the Access Hollywood tape almost certainly actually helped Trump with some evangelicals because, despite being a philandering adulterer, Trump established a more fundamental cultural rapport with their moral value system. I have similarly pointed that that the abuses of the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, far from being the product of liberal sexual revolution, are the product of patriarchy and capitalism, and that conservative religious orthodoxy tends to amplify rather than curtail the abuse.
These are admittedly controversial positions. But they’re also hard to refute after today’s polling shows that 37% of Alabama evangelicals are actually more likely to vote for Roy Moore after hearing the allegations against him, and 34 percent said it would make no difference:
Nearly 40 percent of Alabama evangelicals said in a new poll that they are more likely to vote for GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore following allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
A JMC analytics poll found that 37 percent of evangelicals surveyed said the allegations make them more likely to vote for the GOP Senate candidate in the upcoming election.
Just 28 percent said the allegations made them less likely to vote for Moore and 34 percent said the allegations made no difference in their decision.
These numbers cannot be attributed to pure political tribalism. It is quite simply a culture of abuse.
Moore is and has always been one of their own. His offenses against the law, his bigotries, his lack basic compassion are their own. And yes, his (alleged) active predation on teenage girls is part of it, too. It’s culturally expected. And if it went just a little too far, well, Moore is a man of God who has almost certainly been forgiven by the Lord, so all is well in the land of the Duggars and Duck Dynasty.
And it’s time that all of us started calling it exactly what it is: a culture of explicitly sanctioned sexual abuse.
