Thank you, @Cardinal Fang. I appreciate your posts in this thread.
oops - Sorry - I guess I am not very good at judging sarcasm in writing especially when there are, sadly, so many of his supporters that would say the same without being sarcastic at all.
I completely agree with post 239
I’m fortunate that nothing like this has happened to me. But I find myself identifying with the 14-year-old so strongly, just because I’d have done the exact same thing. I might well have been flattered by the attention of a grown man, if he was nice to me, and I can imagine secretly meeting with the guy. I was a naive teenager, so naive. I can imagine her feeling of “I need to get out of here!” when he initiated sexual activity. That would be me. That would totally be 14-year-old me.
And there’s no way I would have told my mother or anyone. No way. I would have thought it was my fault.
So now we know Judge Moore said an adult man should not have been convicted of “forcible rape” (essentially, rape without consent) but only of statutory rape. The victim in the case was four years old. Four! Moore wrote:
“Because there was no evidence in this case of an implied threat of serious physical injury…or of an implied threat of death, Higdon cannot be convicted of sodomy in the first degree “by forcible compulsion.””
He’s saying here that the four year old consented instead of resisting, so it wasn’t real rape but only statutory rape. Fortunately none of the other judges on the panel agreed with his view, and the man’s conviction was reinstated.
He just gets creepier.
@ that opinion on the rape of a four year old made me vomit. I was raped at that age.
As for why a 14 year old didn’t file a complaint - there are as many reasons as there are 14 year olds. Biggest reason: how many of you had crushes on teachers at that age? And they probably invoked some degree or another of sexual fantasy. That makes kids vulnerable. This girl (at the time) was dealing with a parental divorce and custody battle; throw in a “caring” attentative male who craves teen aged adoration , and it’s a recipe for disaster. And then she is humiliated and he is a powerful man.
I apologize for sarcastically saying that I couldn’t imagine why a 14-year-old molested by a district attorney wouldn’t rush to file a complaint at the courthouse. I know perfectly well that sarcasm is often missed online.
IMO the vast majority of 14-year-olds wouldn’t tell anyone.
I’m disgusted by this whole thing. After being stationed in Alabama for two tours, and seeing parents give permission for their 16 year olds to marry (sometimes 30+ yr old men) more times than I can count, while I taught in a Christian school…I cannot say that I am surprised by the continued support of Alabamians for this pedophile. I am Christian, yet have never seen the Bible twisted to support bad things, as I did while living and working in Alabama. The mentality scared me so much, I told my husband that I would take the kids and raise them with my family in California if he ever got stationed there again. I refused to allow my kids to attend AL schools and homeschooled them on that 2nd tour! My S has the stats for serious merit money at AL schools and even if it were free, my children will not attend an AL school. My personal experiences were THAT bad! I frequently tell peple that I had more of a culture shock living AL then I did living in England.
That’s quite a condemnation of an entire state full of people, based upon your experiences working at one Christian school.
29% of voters in AL say they are MORE LIKELY to vote for Moore given the allegations.
** 29%**
What the hell is wrong with nearly 1/3 of Alabama? 2/3 really when you count the people who say it makes no difference.
Since Bama gets so much promotion on these pages, I think we need to start warning parents and students that 2/3 of Alabama thinks it’s perfectly OK to engage in sexual misconduct with underage women.
My understanding is that a little more than 50% of Bama students are from out of state, which probably impacts campus culture significantly.
You may be misunderstanding that poll. Consider the 33% who say it makes no difference in whether they support him. I would be in that camp, because I already didn’t support him.
Some points you didn’t mention.
The poll only included 575 people overall, and more of them (47%) said they were going to vote for the Democrat, over the Republican (45%). Surprising numbers for Alabama.
You are indicting an entire state based upon one small poll. It is also likely that many people don’t believe the allegations and think it is a smear campaign in order to get the Democrat elected. Do you honestly think 1/3 of the people in Alabama really would support someone more because they were pedophiles? Does that even make sense?
@busdriver11 I won’t go into it all here, but I also worked in technology and was responsible for fixing computers through a large territory that included Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, and Auburn. And was told more than once, that I’d (substitute N word) better be gone before the sun went down, among other racist incidents. This was during '96-'99. Then we were stationed there again 2003-2008…I taught the first couple of years then homeschooled my children the rest of the tour. I am speaking from my personal experiences and from the experiences of my veteran husband and his friends. We all have stories to tell about AL.
I’m sorry you had such a bad experience here in AL, @4MyKidz. Not sure where you were stationed, but it’s not like that everywhere, although there are fake Christians everywhere that pervert the tenets of the faith, including here. But yes, if you are originally from California, Alabama would be like another planet, and vice versa.
I will say that people do get married earlier here than I think they do on average in America for both cultural and financial reasons. My H just told me about an acquaintance’s 19 year old daughter who had recently gotten engaged to another acquaintance’s 22 year old son. That’s probably the 4th or 5th such engagement in our extended circles since our oldest kids became teens. It’s always just so shocking because I assumed their families were like ours, meaning there was the expectation for ALL their kids to go to college, not just their sons. But people often jokingly say that their daughter is only going to college for an “MRS (Mrs.) degree”. It’s not funny to me. Many of these young women never finish their degrees and rush to have babies.
While I don’t want there to be another victim of Moore’s, I am just hoping that if there is another one, she will come forward in time to force this disgusting excuse for a human being off the ballot. I think that’s what it will take.
It was very obvious to me that Fang was being srcastic.
But this response from @momofthreeboys made me gag.
Agree with the first sentence, emphatically NOT the second. She says she was grossed out as soon as his attention became sexual. She didn’t decide it was a bad thing because her peer group thought it was gross.
God that sounds like it was all perfectly OK until those mean girls told her what she was enjoying wasn’t cool. Ugh.
Thank you @belle315 . We were stationed at Maxwell. Very true about fake Christians being everywhere. We did meet some nice people, but they seemed to have blinders on. I once asked my boss why there was a White mall and a Black mall, he seemed confused, then said that’s how it’s always been. This was a multiple college degreed man. You are also right that since I am from SF originally, one of the most diverse cities in America, that I was absolutely shocked by my experiences in AL. I wholeheartedly admit that I am biased against AL and don’t have much hope that folks will do the right thing and NOT vote for Moore.
I am sorry you had such a bad experience in AL, also, @4MyKidz. My husband is from Alabama, and said that many of his friends were black, and there were far more racially mixed social circles than he has seen in the other states we’ve lived. He thinks it’s bizarre when people here in Seattle talk about the racists in the South, because he sees very little racial diversity here (which seems hypocritical) and he did not see racism going on in Alabama, at least with the people he knew, those generally in the middle and upper middle class.
My take on it is that perhaps the racists in some places are more outspoken, and feel freer to say what they want. But it doesn’t mean that there are more of them. When I go to Alabama, I see a much greater mix of black/white people working together and hanging out together than I do in most places.
^^^ This. I have spent a limited amount of time in NC, SC and Georgia. What struck me - coming from the diversity center of the know universe - is that my little coast bubble was so much LESS integrated than what I saw in supposed podunk southern hicksville.
There also seemed to be less angst and anger in the air.
Maybe what we see in the supposed diversity loving and accepting centers is a silencing of other voices. (I know with certainty that in my area certain views are simply not publicly expressed), But, in areas where ‘those’ voices can speak there is an opportunity for actual discussion, maybe an injection of non-PC humor and a resulting closing of the opinion and experience gap.