Cultural conservatism has its own distinctive swine

Lately, we have been given an extended education in the different varieties of liberal pigs. There’s the industrial-scale predator who buys indulgences from Planned Parenthood. And the male feminist who respects women so very much — especially when they’re too drunk to resist him. And the Great Man of Letters creeping on his co-workers. And the let-it-all-hang-out artist who thinks it can’t be assault if the only person you’re touching is yourself.

But this past week our era of exposure has reminded us that cultural conservatism has its own distinctive swine.

So while we wait to see what becomes of Alabama Senate candidate and professional Christian Roy Moore, who is credibly alleged to have spent his 30s pursuing high school girls, it’s worth doing a quick typology of the predators that flourish among the godly and moralistic and traditional.

One type is what you might call the rotten patriarch. This is the man who depends on the trappings of spiritual or familial authority to exploit the young and weak, shame them into silence, and pre-emptively discredit them.

In the defenses of Moore you can see the way conservative impulses protect this kind of figure — both in the suggestion that a man of his religious reputation should be trusted over his accusers, and in the risible invocation of biblical examples to defend an older man’s lust for a 14-year-old girl.

Then there is the burrower, the networker, the institutionalist — the predator who embeds himself within a hierarchical system that protects him because it wants to protect itself.

Many Catholic priest-abusers fit this pattern. The larger ecclesiastical entity saw self-protection as more important than their punishment.

Then finally there is the serial repenter — the creep who relies on the promise of forgiveness to keep his place and his powers and his opportunities to prey again.

All these categories overlap, of course, but still, there is enough that’s unique about conservative styles of predation to draw some lessons.

One is that any social order that vests particular forms of power in men needs to do more, not less, to hold the male of the species accountable.

Another is that the impulse to hide or dismiss scandal because it hurts the short-term cause is a path to self-destruction in the long run.

Again, the Catholic Church’s experience is a case study. And we may be watching something similar happen with evangelicals, who decided with Donald Trump and may decide with Roy Moore that in the war against secular liberalism, they simply can’t afford to police the morals of their leaders.

It’s cultural suicide — because it tells your neighbors and your children that your religious convictions are always secondary to your partisanship.

“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” These words apply everywhere now, to Hollywood pagans and Alabama Christians alike.

But the Christians have particular reasons to meditate upon them — and to consider that they don’t just apply to sexual predations but to the worldly impulses that make otherwise decent people into defenders of the indefensible.