It's Easy to Defend a Molester If You Value Godliness Over Consent

It’s a shallow and easy argument; it’s also obviously untrue. Proud pedophiles aside, no one approves of child sexual abuse. Even ignoring the vast differences in the Dunham and Duggar cases, the defense of either person isn’t proof of prima facie hypocrisy—which necessitates a transgression of your own avowed belief system, not someone else’s—but rather, proof of the immense, difficult gap between two moral belief systems. One is faith-based, relying on God as the arbiter; the other, consent-based, relies on us.

Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism writes eloquently about how these false equivalencies are sustained, in particular, by the Christian right:

The assumption here is that progressives wouldn’t have a problem with, say, an atheist sexually molesting children—but that could not be further from the truth.

[…] There seems to be an assumption among some social conservatives that because progressives do not see premarital sex as sinful and wrong, they aren’t in any position to criticize Josh Duggar’s actions. In other words, because (in their view) progressives take an “anything goes” approach to sex, they argue, progressives are being hypocrites when they condemn Josh Duggar. This assumption is based in a serious misunderstanding of progressive sexual ethics.

She has a “Tale of Two Boxes” explanation of the ethical calculus that determines conservative and liberal sexual ideologies, respectively—and get confused with each other, constantly, because of the transferable labels of “right” and “wrong.”

“For social conservatives,” she writes, “child sexual molestation is in the same category as gay sex or consensual premarital sex. When divided in this way, sexual molestation doesn’t look all that different from consensual premarital sex.”

In other words, for the Duggar camp, the only sexual behavior that can be spoken about without apologizing is sex within the bounds of marriage. Everything else is wrong, and more similar for it. On the other side of the equation—the progressive camp—what’s right is what’s freely agreed to. It’s a standard determined not by religious doctrine but by a straightforward interpersonal equation—a yes and a yes, every time.

These two conceptions of sexual morality are inherently separated and, at their extremes, incompatible. I’d guess that progressives aren’t upset to de-prioritize someone else’s Judeo-Christian morality; I wonder if Christian conservatives are upset to de-prioritize consent.

The Christian sexual tradition is based—as it is on the far right, firmly—in the idea of near-unconditional female submission. Even in 2015, it’s inevitable that a sexual belief system with God as the standard and arbiter leads to a standard where consent matters less. In the worst cases—as is visible in some reactions to the Duggar situation, where his error is located in some vague over-sexualization rather than a knowing breach of consent—sex with God as the arbiter can lead to consent barely factoring in at all.

Writes Libby Anne:

There are all sorts of problems with putting any sexual contact outside of marriage in the same category. For one thing, victims of sexual assault, including children, may end of feeling that they are in some way guilty of what happened—after all, sexual contact outside of marriage is considered sin. For another thing, a teenager sexually molesting children may be treated as a similar offense to a teenager having consensual sex with his girlfriend.

Both things, within a Christian framework—sex before marriage, and molesting children—require forgiveness, redemption, the transformative grace of God. Both things necessitate a level of secrecy and concealment that, in progressive ideology, is in itself the marker of sexual wrong.

And there’s the one place where the conservatives and I meet: secrecy and concealment, for both of our ideologies, are sure signs of sexual transgression. But for Christians, sexual transgression is so omnipresent that it is essentially inevitable; their moral tradition is based in the idea that humans were born in sin, and their moral practices rope off an enormous amount of sexuality as sinful. Secrecy and concealment become naturalized, nearly mandated—an unfortunate side effect of sexuality as it struggles to achieve the difficult moral divine.

Matt Walsh writes at the Blaze:

I’m not diminishing Josh Duggar’s infractions. As I said, he did something very bad. Horrendous. Disturbing. Evil. These were major sins. But Christians commit major sins sometimes, which is the whole reason why Jesus died on the cross.

When conservatives wonder how anyone can defend Lena Dunham, a woman they think is a child molester, the answer is not that her defenders support child abuse, or that they don’t think sexual ethics are as important as they say. The answer comes down to a belief system based on consent, not Christianity—a belief system that can sustain the idea both that sexual ethics are paramount and also that Dunham didn’t egregiously violate any as a seven-year-old girl.

Of course, to them, we seem like we’re picking and choosing, serving our own interests. That’s what we get for thinking that God doesn’t determine sexual morality, but rather that we do, every time. That’s what we get for not believing that we were born in ethical violation—imperfect creatures, like Josh Duggar, in repentance for being so depraved.

Illustration by Jim Cooke; Two Boxes image from Love, Joy, Feminism