From Infidel753:
What’s striking to me is how closely the divide over Moore on the right correlates with the religious/secular divide. The very people who generally exhibit an outright obsession with Christianity’s sexual taboos are going all out to defend a man plausibly accused of sexual misbehavior that would have them foaming at the mouth with condemnation in most cases. It’s reminiscent of their willingness to overlook Trump’s sexual and other moral transgressions.
This isn’t really so surprising. First, they’ve had plenty of previous opportunities to practice such hypocrisy. Consider the many leading Christian Right personalities who have been caught in illicit behavior — Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, George Rekers, Josh Duggar, Ted Haggard, a few zillion Catholic priests, and on and on. Nor are such transgressions rare among less-prominent clerical figures. But the importance Christianity gives to repentance and forgiveness provides a ready-made template for cutting the holy men plenty of slack, while that same fixation on the mental state of the “sinners” leaves little room for attention to their victims, who are reduced to mere stage props for the central story of the victimizer’s fall and redemption. Moore, whose long record of vehement hostility to gay rights, abortion, and separation of church and state puts most fundie preachers in the shade, fits this template perfectly.