What happened to American presumption of innocence?

Scripture tells us “a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches,” which becomes increasingly clear when it’s your name being trashed the way Judge Roy Moore’s name is being sullied now.

There’s nothing theoretical about it then.

Remember Willie Bennett, whose guilt in the 1989 murder of Carol DiMaiti Stuart was so assumed in this city’s rush to judgment that his junior high report card was published as evidence of what a loser he was?

But then we found out Willie didn’t do it, remember?

Remember Richard Jewell, the security guard at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta whose guilt in the pipe bombing of Centennial Park was so assumed in the court of public opinion that he was ridiculed around the nation as a “sad sack” and “wannabe cop”?

Then we all found out he didn’t do it.

How about Joe Silvati, a local gangster who spent 30 years incarcerated for a murder the FBI knew he did not commit. Even though Joe did not have that “good name,” he was no less entitled than any of us to that basic American tenet which holds it’s better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be imprisoned.

It’s a tradition we should not only treasure, but extend this morning to Moore, whose U.S. Senate campaign is under withering attack because of unfounded accusations he engaged in sexual misconduct with a minor 40 years ago.

His frenzied opponents are demanding he drop out of the race immediately while the embattled Moore insists it never happened.

But how do you prove a negative. You can’t, remember?

And if guilt can’t be proven either, then our system calls for a presumption of innocence, remember?

Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

It was a timeless American principle having nothing to do with partisanship, but times are certainly changing, aren’t they?

To be publicly identified today as an evangelical Christian, which Moore professes to be, is to invite the wrath of an increasingly militant secular society.

And to do so as a Republican is to court toxic hostility.

The double standards are shameless.

These political operatives and “panels of experts” we see licking their chops to banish Moore are often the same ones who turned deaf ears to compelling reports of Bill Clinton’s lechery until Monica Lewinsky produced that infamously stained blue dress. Remember?

To this crowd, righteous indignation has become a political tool, which is what makes what we’re seeing now worse than hypocritical; it’s also very dangerous.