With the Alabama special election to fill Jeff Sessions’ seat a mere month away, sexual misconduct allegations have, quite conveniently, surfaced against GOP hopeful Roy Moore (shown). Judge Moore, 70, an anti-establishment candidate despised by swamp-creature Democrats and Republicans, is said to have courted age-of-consent teen girls in Alabama when in his early 30s. In addition, he’s accused of actual sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl during the same period.
In three of the four stories, Moore is not accused of having done anything illegal. They involve three women who say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 (Alabama’s age of consent was and is 16). The contact never amounted to more than hugging and kissing, and, as the Washington Post reports, “None of the three women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact.”
In fact, when one of the women, Debbie Wesson Gibson, 17 when Moore allegedly approached her, asked her mother what she would say about Debbie dating the 34-year-old Moore, her mother replied, “I’d say you were the luckiest girl in the world,” the Post relates. After all, Moore at the time was a hero in his relatively small home town of Gadsden, having graduated from West Point; served in Vietnam; and, during the relevant period, 1977-’82, being assistant district attorney for Etowah County in northern Alabama.
This attitude apparently wasn’t uncommon. Gloria Thacker Deason, 18 when she allegedly dated Moore, said that her mother allowed her to stay out past her 10:30 curfew with him. “She just felt like I would be safe with him.… She thought he was good husband material,” the Post quotes her as saying.
And Moore apparently was seeking a prospective wife. Note that the woman he ultimately wedded, Kayla (née Kisor), is 14 years younger than the Senate hopeful. They’ve been happily married for 32 years.
The true allegation of wrongdoing involves Leigh Corfman, who claims she was 14 when Moore took her out. While she makes no allegation that Moore tried to have sexual intercourse with her, she does claim that he took her back to his house in 1979 and, with them both stripped down to underwear, engaged in kissing and fondling. This would, of course, have been a crime under Alabama law, though the statute of limitations would have run out long ago.
Corfman states that Moore took her home when she asked him to, and that she saw him a second time.
Of course, we have no way of knowing these allegations’ veracity. Notable is that Corfman’s claims certainly don’t fit Moore’s apparent pattern, which was tame, courting-type behavior with girls who, though young, were the age of consent.
As for Moore, he issued a written statement reading thus, “These allegations are completely false and are a desperate political attack by the National Democrat Party and the Washington Post on this campaign” (the Post pursued the story; the women supposedly did not approach the paper).
The Post also tells us that the Moore “campaign said in a subsequent statement that if the allegations were true they would have surfaced during his previous campaigns, adding ‘this garbage is the very definition of fake news.’”
As for Corfman, she claims she didn’t share her story sooner because of personal problems, which included drinking, drugs, numerous boyfriends, a suicide attempt at 16, three divorces, and financial problems. Of course, time may tell whether her allegations are true — or we may never know.
What we do know is that Moore’s critics condemn him for even the other relationships, and, certainly, such male-female age gaps aren’t in fashion today. Yet historically, such gaps weren’t unusual. Why, truly pushing the envelope, famed comedian Charlie Chaplin married an 18-year-old when he was 53; they lived happily and had eight children together.
Moreover, greater age gaps are more common in the Deep South, and especially were so 40 years ago. This explains the mothers who were thrilled at the prospect of Moore courting their daughters.
Lastly, Moore is a devout Christian. From this more traditionalist perspective, age gaps between age-of-consent individuals are not as significant as whether a man and woman abide by God’s laws governing sexuality (e.g., no premarital relations). Interestingly, though, the cultural-relativism preaching Left, which rails against the “imposition of values,” has no tolerance for Deep South Christian culture.
But a trip down Bad Memory Lane reveals even more hypocrisy. Ever-quotable ex-Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards (D) boasted in 1983 that the only way he could lose the upcoming election “is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” But late Democrat Massachusetts congressman Gerry Studds did him one better: He was caught with a live boy and still won elections.
In 1983, Studds was censured by the House for having a sexual relationship with a subordinate, a 17-year-old male page. Nonetheless, Studds was consistently reelected until his retirement in 1997 (gotta’ hand it to those Bay State voters). Oh, it was pointed out that the teen was the “age of consent,” and Studds defended his actions as a “consensual relationship with a young adult.”
Note that unlike with Moore, this “relationship” involved actual sex — homosexual sex. Yet according to liberals, Studds deserved reelection and Moore deserves revulsion. It’s another example of Sexual Devolution double standards and how, among the Left, it’s not what you do, but who you are.
Of course, the equation will be changed if Corfman’s charges can be proven true. Whether or not the tale is curious, however, the timing certainly is.
Photo: AP Images
