{"id":26031,"date":"2017-11-10T00:08:54","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T00:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26031"},"modified":"2017-11-10T00:09:29","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T00:09:29","slug":"sex-enters-a-key-political-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26031","title":{"rendered":"Sex enters a key political contest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/moore.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-26033\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/moore-300x200.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/moore-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/moore.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A Hollywood film mogul has had his career wiped out over allegations of rape. Same for an Academy Award-winning actor. Women are streaming forward to say &#8220;Me, too.&#8221; The public seems to more or less have accepted the women&#8217;s view of what happened with these men.<\/p>\n<p>Many other men in the entertainment industry are facing similar accusations.<\/p>\n<p>OK, then. What about a candidate for the U.S. Senate? A Republican former state supreme court chief justice is facing charges of sexual contact with an underage girl.<\/p>\n<p>Who do we believe here? Roy Moore, the accused candidate, or the woman who was 14 years of age at the time the incident allegedly occurred?<\/p>\n<p>This &#8220;Me too&#8221; environment has elevated the issue of sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment to a whole new level of visibility.<\/p>\n<p>I am in no position to assess the value of what the accuser has said Moore supposedly did. Republican leaders are saying that &#8220;if it&#8217;s true,&#8221; Moore has to pull out of his Senate contest against Democratic opponent Doug Jones.<\/p>\n<p>Here is where the matter gets sticky. The election will take place slightly more than a month from now. How does someone prove an allegation of a crime that occurred nearly 40 years ago in such a short span of time? Absent that proof, how do voters respond?<\/p>\n<p>Moore is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Then again, so are the many other men in public life who&#8217;ve been accused of sex crimes ranging from making inappropriate remarks to flat-out <em>rape<\/em>. The public, though, is quick to presume the worst about those others.<\/p>\n<p>Will the voters in Alabama do the same to Roy Moore?<\/p>\n<p>This situation is going to get real sticky &#8230; real fast.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Hollywood film mogul has had his career wiped out over allegations of rape. Same for an Academy Award-winning actor. Women are streaming forward to say &#8220;Me, too.&#8221; The public seems to more or less have accepted the women&#8217;s view of what happened with these men. Many other men in the entertainment industry are facing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26031\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sex enters a key political contest<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[7407,7392,4037,4234,4237],"class_list":["post-26031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-news","tag-alabama-special-election","tag-me-too","tag-roy-moore","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-sexual-harassment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26031"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26035,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26031\/revisions\/26035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}