The miracle in Alabama

For the first time in 25 years, Alabamians have elected a Democratic senator in the reddest of red states in America. Judge Roy Moore was defeated by 21,000 votes by a Democrat former prosecutor who gained convictions of racists in Alabama who were responsible for the deaths of small children in a church bombing. So the contrasts between these two candidates were significant.

Moore was an obstructionist, choosing to follow his interpretation of God’s law over man’s law. As a result, he was twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for defying the law; first over his display of the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Court and secondly, his failure to follow the dictates of marriage equality and order marriage licenses to be issued to gay couples.

America is a secular nation, founded on religious principles but not dictated by them. When there is a conflict between our interpretations of God’s law with the written dictates of man’s law, man’s law must be followed, no matter how deeply the believer believes it’s wrong.

Moore also was a birther, as is President Trump, stating over and over that he was confident Barack Obama was not a native-born American, long after Obama produced a birth certificate proving he was. That’s the thing about absolutists. They hold on to their beliefs despite what the facts say and they get their own facts from selective news outlets. I had a man who has been a good friend of mine for years tell me a few months ago that he doesn’t know where he would find the truth if anything ever happened to Fox News. He truly believes that’s the only news channel that reports objectively. Others have said similar things about Rush Limbaugh and even Breitbart News.

When our views are that biased, we’re going to support politicians who say the same things and that’s why President Trump’s support has stayed fairly steady at 38% since his election. If Trump says it, it must be true. Steve Bannon, a former executive with Breitbart News and an important member of President Trump’s staff in the earliest days, made an impassioned plea to supporters of Roy Moore to elect him because he and Trump believe the same things that Moore does.

I’m sure some of you remember during the last Presidential campaign when then-candidate Trump stated several times that on the night of 9/11, several thousand Muslims were shown celebrating on national television. That film clip has never been found and several objective observers say it hasn’t been found because it never existed. That was a truth in Trump’s mind only. On the other hand, Moore stated several times about the menace of Sharia law existing in this country and that, in fact, it did already exist in some communities in Illinois and Indiana. When pressed about the specific communities that were under Sharia law, he couldn’t name them. Quite possibly because there are no communities in the United States under Sharia law. It was a truth in Moore’s mind only.

But of course, the overriding issue that defeated Roy Moore in Alabama were the charges of several different women that he sexually harassed them when he was in his 30’s and they were teenage girls, some as young as 14. So when people entered the voting booth, their choice was between a man who carried the political baggage named earlier along with the sexual accusations of being a child molester or a Democrat who appears to have none of the baggage of his opponent.

The reason why the Democrats shouldn’t gloat too much over this victory is that their candidate won by only 2 percentage points over a candidate as flawed as Roy Moore was. Many Democrat officials are predicting the win in Alabama as a harbinger of things to come during the mid-terms in 2018 but I’m not so optimistic because over 650,000 Alabama voters held their noses and voted for Roy Moore.

If it happened with Roy Moore in Alabama, it can happen with other candidates in other states too.