In a normal world, multiple women coming forward to expose a man for sexually assaulting and preying on girls would destroy his career. In Trump’s America 2017, it means that the man’s supporters further dig in their heels to defend and vehemently support him.
Of course, I am talking about Alabama’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Roy Moore. In the weeks leading up to the election, I’ve seen many pleas to the basic humanity and dignity of potential voters to please not vote for Moore and put a pedophile in the U.S. Senate. I totally understand these pleas because I’d make them, too—if I thought they’d make a difference.
I’ve seen the widespread shock and horror over the unwavering support for Moore in spite of the allegations. Folks are even more stunned to see that white evangelicals have overwhelmingly stood behind this deplorable man even as reports about his history of sexually abusing piled on. At first glance, it looks like this would go against the Christian values that white evangelical voters claimed guides their decisions.
Now we know better. Check out this data via The Atlantic :
As recently as 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” But by the time Donald Trump was running for president in 2016, that number had risen sharply to 72 percent. White evangelicals are now more tolerant of immoral behavior by elected officials than the average American. “This is really a sea change in evangelical ethics,” Robert P. Jones, the head of the institute and the author of The End of White Christian America, recently told me.
The white evangelicals who support sexual predators like Moore and President Trump don’t care about the morality of the politicians representing him. They just want to win so they can exert disproportionate control over the country and force everyone to live under their oppressive policies. Codifying their intolerant views like making safe abortion illegal and ending marriage equality is the goal—and it doesn’t matter if electing an abuser is the key to making it happen.
Moore found the perfect community to let him hide in plain sight. By galvanizing a racist, homophobic, and Islamophobic base, Moore has found supporters who more readily believe rape victims are liars—and there’s research about it. A 2006 University of New England study found that participants who were more accepting of rape myths also were more racist, classist, sexist, ageist, homophobic and religiously intolerant. Consider Moore’s political history as summarized by ThinkProgress:
His victory in the Alabama Republican primary was widely considered a victory for Christian nationalism — unsurprising given Moore’s history as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. While in the position, Moore erected a 5,200-pound monument of the Ten Commandments in the lobby of the state judicial building; he later refused to remove it despite public outcry. As a Senate candidate, Moore has doubled down on his extremist stance, actively pushing for Christian education, implying that Muslims should not serve in government, and failing to clarify his stance on the rights of LGBTQ people.
Moore fits the aforementioned qualities perfectly. His supporters cheer him on because they believe he’s doing the right thing—laws or equality be damned. Is it really a surprise that most of his core base continued to support him?
As we try to minimize the damage done by power-hungry, lying conservatives, we need to know what we’re up against. White evangelicals overwhelmingly voted Trump. To better understand these “Roypublicans,” we can’t just obsess over the details; we have to look at the whole (racist) picture. As Charles Blow wrote in the New York Times:
The Trump agenda is the Republican agenda: hostility to women and minorities, white supremacy and white nationalism, xenophobia, protectionist trade policies, tax policies that punish the poor and working class and people living in blue states.
Trump is a white man on a white stallion fighting to preserve white culture and white power. People who support this point of view and cheer the Trump charade forgave his failings because they believed so deeply in his mission.
Dismissing rape victims as liars isn’t a singular trait; it’s one part of a larger values system. Rape culture and white supremacy go hand in hand. These folks don’t care about doing what’s right; it’s all about what’s right for them—child molestation or pussy grabbing be damned.
