Reading the Far Right: Defending the Indefensible Roy Moore

For the past few weeks, there's been a theme running through far-right media: defending Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama in any way possible, some of them pretty preposterous.

They've gone beyond saying the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice may not actually have molested a 14-year-old girl or assaulted a 16-year-old one, and that they like his anti-LGBT, antichoice politics anyway. As much as we disagree with that, it's a reasonable defense, and as credible as Moore's accusers appear, we acknowledge that accusation doesn't always mean guilt.

But in reading extreme-right media so you don't have to, we've found that many contributors to these outlets are creating conspiracy fantasies around Moore and his accusers, calling for a return to puritanical sexual norms, or, most bizarrely yet, blaming feminism and liberalism for, well, everything.

All those come together in a World Net Dailycolumn by Scott Lively, the deeply homophobic Massachusetts minister who's promoted anti-LGBT bigotry in Uganda and Russia as well as the U.S. "The masculinization of women that began in the 1960s has produced a hybrid version of feminism that combines the most toxic aspects of both femininity and masculinity: the manipulative cunning of women and the militaristic will-to-power of men," Lively wrote.

These feminists' "muscular assault on 'toxic masculinity' has now spilled into the larger culture in a tsunami of sex-based accusations against men in power that suggests an indictment of all men, and of the very concept of male leadership," he continued. "Many of the accusations are undoubtedly true, which lends undo [sic] weight to those that aren't, inviting yet more of both sorts (and opening the door to the same political opportunists who 'never let a good crisis go to waste')."

Lively, naturally, is among those who think the allegations about Moore aren't true. "Judge Roy Moore is the victim of a witch hunt the likes of which we haven't seen since Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas," he wrote. "I don't know Judge Moore personally, so I have only his history as a unwavering defender of the Bible and my knowledge of the bad character and underhandedness of his critics like [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell -- and the blatant moral depravity of his pro-abortion Democrat opponent -- to go on. That's enough for me -- in my capacity as a private citizen -- to support him pending the outcome of 'due process' that is the birthright of every American."

Except due process involves a court of law and doesn't apply to electoral contests -- voters can choose to believe Moore or believe his accusers, or simply accept or reject him based on his ideology, which is, uh, pretty toxic.

Ned Ryun, a former George W. Bush speechwriter who now runs an organization called American Majority, has been making the rounds of right-wing media to make similar points about the supposed undermining of masculinity.

Toxic masculinity "was created by the left," he contended in an appearance on the Fox News Channel's Tucker Carlson Tonight. "We're dealing with some of this toxic masculinity that Hollywood and the media created," he said. "You go back and look at the years and years of conditioning of objectifying women, of turning them into, you know, these objects in print and film and normalizing abhorrent behavior."

What is "perhaps ironic is that these liberal elites who sneered at us who actually believe in a culture of, practice faith and respect for women and respect for the institution of marriage -- well, it turns out that those are sneering at us were actually in fact these patriarchal misogynistic perverts and predators," Ryun continued. Carlson responded that Moore was an outlier as a conservative evangelical accused of sexual misconduct, saying most of the alleged perpetrators were liberals and self-described feminists.

That's not exactly accurate, although misconduct unfortunately cuts across the political spectrum. And the abuse of women has happened for millennia, long before any Hollywood movie objectified them.

Earlier, Ryun had gone on Breitbart's radio program to play the conspiracy card about the allegations regarding Moore, fingering McConnell, who is not a liberal by any measure, although he probably considers Moore a dangerous extremist, and he would be right about that.

"I will say this clearly: I do not have hard proof, but I strongly suspect it's a very short list of people, all who are associated with Mitch McConnell -- whether it's Josh Holmes, whether it's Karl Rove, might even be Steven Law -- I don't know, but I strongly, strongly suspect somebody out of the McConnell camp planted the story," Ryun said. No, maybe The Washington Post, which broke the story, just did some good investigative reporting.

Elsewhere in right-wing land, there are plenty of attempts to discredit the Post and Moore's accusers. In a Breitbart "exclusive" interview, Nancy Wells, the mother of Moore accuser Leigh Corfman -- the one who said Moore touched in a sexual manner when she was only 14 -- said her daughter had to be convinced by Post reporters to go public with her story. Her statements "seem to indicate activist behavior on the part of the Washington Post reporters," Breitbart's Aaron Klein wrote.

No, convincing people to go public is simply what diligent reporters do. And the Post did acknowledge that Moore's accusers were initially reluctant to come forward.

Klein also reported that Wells contradicted one detail of Corfman's account, in which Corfman said she spoke to Moore via a phone in her bedroom. Wells said there was no phone in her daughter's bedroom. However, this did not keep Wells from standing by her daughter's story.

The Breitbart contributor further cited Corfman's "troubled background ... including three divorces, bankruptcies and a history of drug abuse." That was all in the Post story, but the folks at Breitbart likely see it as a way to discredit Corfman.

Also on the discrediting side, Klein did another story for Breitbart in which he interviewed Jeff DeVine, a former boyfriend of Beverly Young Nelson, the woman who accused Moore of sexually assaulting her when she was 16. DeVine doesn't believe her, based on nothing but his "experience with people," he told Klein.

"I certainly wouldn't qualify as an expert, but I have been in ministry for many years," DeVine said. "I have dealt with a lot of people. People that have been through trauma. People that have been molested or hurt and all kinds of situations. I have learned to just study body language and the way a person tells a story. And as I said, I wouldn't qualify, I am sure, in a court of law as being an expert -- but just from my experience, I didn't find her story believable. And the way she told it."

We'll just leave that there.

Linda Harvey of the far-right group Mission: America also questioned the veracity of Moore's accusers and, of course, the "mainstream media." If the allegations "turn out to be true, he will be rightfully labeled the latest turncoat hypocrite who publicly professed to be a faithful Christian. ... But these allegations do not have a ring of truth because of the timing, the sketchy accusers and the age of the accusations," she wrote in a World Net Daily column. "Our culture is replete with whining women (and men) who invent alleged 'abuse' and who become even more willing to do so at the prospect of attention and money.

"The allegations also lack believability because of the untrustworthy reporting by the petty, rumor-mongering mainstream media, whose slander of conservatives borders on seditious. What I do know is that Moore's courage in sticking to constitutional principles has cost him. His brave stand in defending the truth about the illegality of same-sex 'marriage' was something no other judge in America did. It was a high risk to his career and he still did it."

Another WND contributor, Alan Keyes, onetime presidential hopeful and failed U.S. Senate candidate (against Barack Obama), contended that Christians should be skeptical of Moore's accusers because, well, Jesus Christ was crucified for an offense he didn't commit.

"I marvel at the ease with which some Christians abandon their trust in those whom they have, by their good fruits, adjudged to be fellow members of the living body of Christ," Keyes wrote. "I'm thinking of Judge Roy Moore, of course. During the solemn observance of Christ's sacrifice, we who profess to represent his presence in our time remember that he was falsely accused and falsely condemned."

We could go on and on, but that's a representative sample of the more bizarre defenses put out there for Moore. The Senate special election between Moore and Doug Jones -- a moderate Democrat who's been called a "radical leftist" by Breitbart -- will take place December 12. The Advocate will continue reporting on the race and have full coverage of the results, and will keep on reading the far right so you don't have to.