Why they stick with him
by digby
Sarah Posner wrote a series of tweets this morning about why evangelicals stick with pigs like Trump and Moore. I've excerpted some of it below.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a story about sex abuse by the powerful leader of a conservative evangelical ministry. Read it here.
The subject of my story, the evangelist Bill Gothard, was 80 years old when *decades* of abusing women and teenaged girls finally brought him down -- but not even completely.
You see, men like him, and Moore, are seen as authority figures that women are expected to submit to. Yes, *submit* to.
He would groom young women (sound familiar) and get them to come work for him. One told me of this grooming, and that Gothard wanted to "counsel" her about her rape as a child.
Gothard's homeschooling materials, widely used by homeschooling families, including the Duggars of 19 Kids and Counting fame, taught this about sexual assault:
Gothard’s philosophy on sexual assault is detailed explicitly in his publications, including in the Wisdom Booklets. When a woman is attacked, one booklet reads, “She is to cry out for help. The victim who fails to do this is equally guilty with the attacker.” A document Gothard sent to ATI families, “Lessons from Moral Failures in a Family,” purports to be a teenage boy’s meditation on his sexual assault of his sisters, which he blames in part on his mother, for allowing his sisters to run naked after a bath and for asking him to change his sisters’ diapers, something that would not have occurred if the family “had only applied Levitical law.”
Wisdom Booklet No. 24 contains a section on why “God’s laws on nakedness begin with modesty in the home,” and that “God’s people are commanded not to ‘uncover the nakedness’ of those near of kin.” The Wisdom Booklet also says that “nakedness arouses insatiable lusts,” lusts that are “neither quenchable nor controllable."Recall that Josh Duggar's fall from grace was a result of revelations that he had sexually abused his own sisters.
Gothard's take on this may be one of the most extreme views, but certainly idea that women, and even teenage girls, invite their attackers is more commonplace than you'd imagine. Or that they'd lie about it. Or conspire with liberals to lie. Or conspire with the media.
So when you ask, will evangelicals abandon Moore over this? Some will. But Trump admitted assaulting women and still 81% of white evangelicals voted for him. White evangelicals remain his strongest base of support