Are your brain waves still twisting and twirling into headache-inducing knots in an attempt to figure out how white folks in Alabama who profess to be Christians still embrace Roy Moore? The more the public learns of this man’s predatory behavior towards underage girls, the more passionate become his supporters’ — female as well as male — affection for the man.
The historical pattern has been obscured by a misnomer. The institution Alabama and other states of the Confederacy fought to preserve was not “chattel” slavery but “sexual” slavery. Yes, that would be the modern term in international law. This clarification places the so-called moral authority of the Bible Belt into almost comical relief, were the reality not so damnably shameful. Sexual slavery is not merely what we think of today as sex trafficking. It also encompasses what DNA evidence now proves beyond a doubt took place in the antebellum South. It involved a forced labor system, where slaves were forced into arrangements of non-consensual sex as well. No legal remedies existed for sexual assault or even murder, other than compensation of the owner for the property loss. After Congress ended the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, fearing widespread slave revolts, plantation owners, found financial incentives for forceably impregnating female slaves. DNA testing now reveals that approximately 33% of all African-American males trace their pre-1860 patrilineal ancestry to England or Ireland.
But what is “patriarchal amoralism”? It is a system of morality based on the truth declarations of the patriarchal leader. If the man says that it is “fake news” that the mulatto slave children running around the plantation bear a striking physical resemblance to him, then that matter is settled. Right and wrong, what is and is not decent is determined by the proclamations of the master. In fact, what is and is not real is his determination as well. The mistress of the plantation becomes a skilled liar, because her job is to validate whatever he says, however far it deviates from the evidence of everyone’s own senses.
So, what does this have to do with Christianity? Even the clergy produced their fair share of mulatto children in the antebellum South. They justified sexual slavery as saving the “purity of white womanhood” from men’s baser nature. When that era ended, patriarchal amoralism was at the forefront of the lynching of blacks. It re-established the white political order and the clergy along with their congregants were as likely to attend these rituals as lay people because it was supposed to reinforce the strict morality that protected white womanhood from the predations of black rapists.
Given such a historical trajectory, Roy Moore being persecuted at the hands of the fake media is practically a martyred saint.
