These women aren’t props for your partisan gotcha tweets.
The allegations against Roy Moore are disgusting — and if you find yourself reluctant to say so because of your politics, then you’re pretty gross, too. The Leigh Corfman story, reported by the Washington Post, is about so much more than just some older guy having a relationship with some younger girl. That, of course, would be bad enough — many girls haven’t even had their f***ing periods at age 14 — but this is also about a man who abuses his power to prey on the powerless. It’s about a respected district attorney finding a girl in a vulnerable position (waiting with her mother outside of a child-support hearing) and relishing in the opportunity to take advantage of it.
.. As my colleague David French notes, there are a lot of reasons to believe these allegations:
- There are multiple accusers.
- These women didn’t come to the press seeking attention, they simply answered the questions when the press came to them.
- They have witnesses corroborating their stories.
- Finally, the woman with the most serious allegations, Leigh Corfman, voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — making the political-hit-job storyline laughable at best.
.. As my colleague David French notes, there are a lot of reasons to believe these allegations: There are multiple accusers. These women didn’t come to the press seeking attention, they simply answered the questions when the press came to them. They have witnesses corroborating their stories. Finally, the woman with the most serious allegations, Leigh Corfman, voted for Donald Trump in 2016 — making the political-hit-job storyline laughable at best.
It’s not that these people only care about victims if the abuser is a liberal, it’s that they don’t really care about victims at all. For them, the abused are nothing more than political pawns to further a partisan agenda.
.. Now, these comments actually are very important — just not for the reasons that the people making them think that they are. They’re important not as defenses, but because they’re perfect examples of an exact reason why these women may have been too afraid to come forward sooner: because they were afraid that they’d be ridiculed and doubted, and that no one would believe them.
I’d like someone to please give me some examples of women who have launched themselves to fame and fortune by falsely accusing men of sexual assault — because we all know that that’s not what happens. What does happen is their reputations are scrutinized harshly, and the allies of the powerful men they’ve accused comb through their pasts looking for evidence that they’re liars. People are afraid to employ them; men are afraid to speak to them; their lives are forever changed. Make no mistake: Speaking out publicly about your abuse is not a way to stardom; it’s a painful, harrowing experience and a sacrifice that so few are able to actually make given how brutal the consequences can be.
Roy Moore’s Accuser Did Work for Joe Biden, Other Democrats
Deborah Wesson Gibson, the woman who alleges that she engaged in a legal and consensual but inappropriate relationship with Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore, has boasted about doing work for Vice President Joe Biden and other Democrats.
Gibson was one of three women quoted in the Washington Post claiming that Moore pursued and or dated them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s.
Judge Roy Moore on Sean Hannity Show: ‘We Have Some Evidence of Some Collusion’ Against Me in WaPo Smear
HANNITY: “Let’s take you out of this for a second. Let’s say, if any Senate candidate who was 32 at the time had done this to a 14-year-old girl, to me it’s disgusting. To me, it would be despicable. To me, that is a predator.”
MOORE: “Yeah.”
HANNITY: “Do you agree with me, that no such person who ever does that should ever be in the United States Senate?”
MOORE: “Of course. Nobody who abuses a 14-year-old at age 32 or age 17—it doesn’t matter—if you abuse a 14-year-old you shouldn’t be a Senate candidate. I agree with that. But I did not do that.”
HANNITY: “Let’s go back to it one more question, because I didn’t understand this. If you were 32, and you do date a 17 or 18 year old—that’s a pretty big gap for a pretty young girl—is that something that you did when you were dating? I’m not talking about the 14-year-old in that specific allegation. Would it be normal behavior back in those days for you to date a girl that’s 17 or 18?”
MOORE: “No. Not normal.”
HANNITY: “My daughter is 16 years old. If she’s 17 or 18, I don’t want her dating a 32-year-old.”
MOORE: “I wouldn’t either.”
HANNITY: “And you can say unequivocally that you never dated anybody that was in their late teens like that when you were 32?”
MOORE: “It would have been out of my customary behavior, that’s right.”
HANNITY: “In other words, you don’t recall dating any girl that young when you were that old?”
MOORE: “I’ve said no.”
HANNITY: “And you think that’s inappropriate, too, that’s what you’re saying?”
MOORE: “Yes.”
Jesus’ Parents and Roy Moore’s Gall
When Zeigler was asked by The Washington Examiner about an allegation that the Senate candidate Roy Moore initiated sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32, Zeigler cited the biblical couple to say, essentially: No biggie! This is as old as Christianity.
“Take Joseph and Mary,” he explained. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here. Maybe just a little bit unusual.” He made it sound as if Moore were some religiously inclined analogue to those military-history enthusiasts who dress in the uniforms of yesteryear to travel back to the Revolutionary War. Moore was merely re-enacting the New Testament in the name of lust.
It’s worth pointing out that there is something illegal here: A 14-year-old girl is below the age of consent in Alabama, and that was true as well four decades ago, when the incident is alleged to have occurred. It’s also worth pointing out that Jesus supposedly arrived via virgin birth, so Joseph’s interactions with Mary up until that point may have been considerably more G-rated and gallant than in Zeigler’s version.
It’s further worth pointing out that millenniums ago, girls were treated as chattel and sold off as child brides, a practice that no one in his or her right mind would regard as inspirational and cite as an exonerating precedent.
.. If I sound bitter, I am, because they have long been among the principal purveyors of hatred for gay people like me. They’re a big reason that so many of us grew up terrified that we’d be ostracized, wondering if there was something twisted in us and confronted with laws that treated us as second-class citizens. We were supposedly in moral error, and thus deserved a lesser lot.
.. In 2002 he called sexual relations between people of the same gender “an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it.”
.. Although Christianity as I understand it doesn’t smile on the florid lying, womanizing, hypersexual vocabulary and assorted cruelties that have been prominent threads in Donald Trump’s life, Moore and many other evangelical Christians spared Trump their censure. I understand their motivation to vote for him: abortion. But that didn’t compel them to remain so mum about his misdeeds or summon the adoration that some of them did. (I’m looking at you, Jerry Falwell Jr.)