“The legs of the lame are not equal: so is a parable in the mouth of fools.” Proverbs 26:7

A few days ago Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, delivered his opinion of the recent Judge Roy Moore scandal:

If the allegations are true? Well, of COURSE. If the allegations are true, the citizens of Alabama ought to do more than politely request that Moore step out of the race. If the allegations are true, they ought all to pitch in, buy the world’s biggest frying pan, fill it with about half a foot of piping hot bacon grease, and fry the good judge a deep brown on both sides. . . . A defense of the presumption of innocence ought never to be read as a defense of the guilty. If he is guilty of this, he deserves everything he is getting and more. . . . (Blog & Mablog, Fried Brown on Both Sides, November 10, 2017)

Agreed. The Bill of Rights applies to every American citizen regardless of the charge. That said, I don’t trust fundamentalists — especially fundies who beat their Bibles like paddles splashing the water on a Mississippi showboat. They raise suspicion. Especially Roy Moore. I have never trusted the man since he discovered that the finger of God inscribed the Decalogue for Moore glory, which was in the ’80s. He started with a plaque on the wall of his courtroom; moved up to a 2½-ton granite monument at the state judicial building; and finished by defying the Supreme Court of the United States. That’s an awful lot of self-righteousness. And face it, when your closest advocates argue that “Mary was a teenager too,” even they have conceded the point. I don’t doubt he did it — he probably did worse. This is a consistent principle with grandstanders. They seldom live according to their loudly proclaimed standards.

Consider, for example, Douglas Wilson. Read the quote again:

If the allegations are true, the citizens of Alabama ought to do more than politely request that Moore step out of the race. If the allegations are true, they ought all to pitch in, buy the world’s biggest frying pan, fill it with about half a foot of piping hot bacon grease, and fry the good judge a deep brown on both sides.

He writes with such certain clarity. It’s all so cut and dried. If this, then that: As though he has a fixed moral standard that cannot waver. His readers probably think that he actually believes this. But I can state with greater certainty that he does not believe a word of it. It’s all for show. I know this because 12 years ago his 24-year-old ministerial student molested a 14-year-old girl. He violated her several times and, when confronted, he swore an oath before God that he was guilty as charged. He even signed a plea bargain admitting his guilt. He did it all. And unlike Judge Roy Moore, he did not deny any of it.

But Doug Wilson did not want to fry his protégé “a deep brown on both sides.” Mr. Wilson mitigated the crimes by arguing that the parents had arranged a “secret courtship,” which apparently meant the grown man had license to do as he pleased with the girl.¹ Then Mr. Wilson argued that the girl enjoyed the attention she received from the man, because she documented it in her diary. Between these two circumstances, Doug Wilson does not believe his student broke any criminal statute. So he sent the young man on a missionary trip to Haiti.

And in case you believe that this happened 12 years ago and that Doug Wilson may have changed his position, then the answer is no, that is not correct. Less than two years ago Mr. Wilson vigorously defended his actions on his personal website. No bluster about buying “the world’s biggest frying pan, fill it with about half a foot of piping hot bacon grease, and fry the good judge [student] a deep brown on both sides. . . . If he is guilty of this, he deserves everything he is getting and more.” No showboating, no grandstanding, not even a cartwheel. Doug Wilson did not want to fry his protégé “a deep brown on both sides” — he wanted him warmed over easy.

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¹ I know that Doug Wilson invoked the “Mary was a young teenager too” argument, but I cannot remember where.