I didn’t leave Alabama because of Roy Moore.
Ol’ Roy is of a type that should be familiar to anyone: he’s a televangelist. He’s an aspiring martyr without the balls to actually face death. The sort of whom a smarter and sharper Hank Williams Jr once sang “They want you to send your money to the Lord, but they give you their address.” He found a bulletproof hustle: the persecuted Christian in a state that’s fully half Baptist. Telling the veto majority that they are an oppressed few is always reliable grift for the holy rollers, and informs no small bit of how we got to where we are.
Ol’ Roy’s a troll. He specifically put up one Ten Commandments after another knowing he would be made to take it down, knowing that this was out of bounds to anyone with better than an eighth-grade-civics grasp of how church-and-state works, knowing that the rednecks would bay and howl to his benefit and he could use this to get rich and famous. And he did. He managed to get himself thrown off the Alabama Supreme Court twice – and the fact that he made it back to get thrown off the second time puts the lie to anyone who thinks Christianity persecuted in the least in this country – and then managed to get himself the Republican nomination for Senate, which is normally tantamount to election ever since 1996.
And then, the truth started to come out.
It’s not like this is the thing that disqualifies him from office. Roy Moore should have never been elected anything more responsible than head of the coffee club. I thought about saying “maybe deacon” but the news of the last week has made it pretty apparent that he never should have been placed in any position of power, by anyone, ever. I’ve been to Gadsden, more than I’d’ve liked, and I assure you I can absolutely see how such a thing could transpire there in the 1970s.
Here’s the thing: you could get a Roy Moore anywhere. There is nothing exceptionally Alabama about him, nothing that couldn’t have been bred in central California or South Boston or Idaho or Missouri. That’s not the thing that jumps out. What jumps out is the army of loyal zombies rising to his defense, saying not that he didn’t do it, but that even if he did, he didn’t do anything wrong. People making Biblical analogies which are either spectacularly blasphemous or else torpedo the fundamental understanding of Christianity at the waterline. Insane talk about how he never dated anyone without the mother’s permission. One thing after another that makes you grab your skull with both hands and scream “how in the chicken fried fuck do you think this is somehow a DEFENSE?”
But he’s on their side. No amount of sin is enough to make it worth cutting ties with someone on your side. The fact that they have a concept of “side” that is appalling at best and inhuman at worst makes no difference whatsoever. Maybe he’s a serial child diddler, but at least he’s not a Democrat. They don’t have an answer for it when you accuse them – when you ask exactly what part of God’s miracle plan involves groping a teenager, they hem and haw and try to work around it, but it’s not enough to make them disavow. It’s not even a question of “well I don’t want to vote for him, but the other guy is worse”, which in itself would be asinine. No, it’s “I don’t care, I still think he’s the best one to vote for.” It’s affirmative support of a crime and a sin, simply because that’s their team.
And that, dear friends, is why you will never find me with an Alabama address ever again, for the rest of my days. Because on December 12, you’ll get a precise count of just how many people in that state are willing to countenance the unspeakable for the sake of their side. And I’ll have that many reasons why my ashes will be going into the Pacific instead of the red red dirt of what was never really home.
Of which.