We’ve heard some pretty outrageous attempts to defend Donald Trump after it emerged he bragged about his outrageous, degrading, and potentially criminal behavior toward women in 2005. Some of the worst “defenses” have come from what passes for leadership in the religious right. To hear some of these nut jobs talk, bragging about sexual assault doesn’t matter as much as derailing Roe v. Wade.
But even by those standards, one religious right luminary’s attempt to defend Trump is particularly outrageous. By this guy’s “logic,” Trump’s behavior isn’t a big deal because–wait for it–we cannot allow a woman in the Oval Office.
If you read People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch often, you probably know about Dave Daubenmire, a former longtime high school football coach in central Ohio who is now a full-time religious right activist. He rose to fame by falsely claiming he’d beaten back an ACLU attempt to hold him to account for forcing his players to take part in religious activities.
Even by religious right standards, Daubenmire is a nut. Among other things, he believes we have no business speaking out against the likes of Westboro Baptist Church, and that only Christians should sit in judgment of other Christians.
But those arguments are a model of sanity compared to something Daubenmire blasted out on Tuesday morning. He claimed that Trump bragging about how he can “move on” women and “grab their pussy” because he’s a star isn’t a big deal. The real concern in his eyes is that Hillary Clinton has no business running for president in the first place because she’s a woman. Watch here.
Daubenmire was none too pleased with the “selective outrage” from “feckless, sissy Republicans” about the Trump tape. However, he believes that there’s a much bigger problem in this election. He wondered if any of his mostly fundified audience had last heard their pastors preach that “women shouldn’t be in leadership.”
Daubenmire conceded that women and men are equal, but argued that the Bible unequivocally declares “women should not be in authority over a man”–not just in the church, but in any realm. For that reason, he thought that everyone pitching a fit about Trump’s debauchery should go back and ask when if their pastor has ever decried the fact that he’s running against a woman.
“With all that’s going on with Trump and everybody screaming and hollering about that, when is the last time your pastor stood up in the pulpit and said, ‘Hey, listen, we cannot vote for Hillary Clinton because women are not to have authority over men’? If we want to follow the Bible, that would sure be a good place to start, wouldn’t it?”
To Daubenmire’s mind, Hillary’s candidacy is a bigger deal that Trump’s behavior. While the Trump tapes merely exposed “the immorality of a sinful man,” a woman running for president runs counter to the Bible. He argued that a woman ruling over a man “is a sign of judgment of the Lord.”
I had to listen to this twice to believe what I was hearing. You mean to tell me that a man boasting about making unwelcome and potentially criminal advances toward women isn’t a big deal? This wasn’t just “the immorality of a sinful man.” As Anderson Cooper pointed out during the second debate, the Justice Department considers this to be sexual assault.
And that’s before we even discuss Daubenmire’s claim that women shouldn’t even be allowed to run for office. Believe it or not, a considerable number of religious right leaders have argued that the mere fact Hillary is a woman disqualifies her from running for president. I’ve already told you about one example; earlier this year, I told you that veteran religious right activist Gary Cass argued that only Christian men should be allowed to hold office. Apparently these fundies forgot that one of the judges in Israel was a woman–Deborah.
I know what you’re probably thinking–why shine the light on this nut? Well, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, we need to shine the hot lights on instances where Daubenmire and others of his ilk speak in what they think are unguarded moments. This is one of them. Daubenmire is now on record as saying that he’s less concerned about a depraved and debauched jerk even being in the discussion for president than–horrors!–a woman being allowed to run.
Granted, Daubenmire is a nut even by religious right standards. But when you consider the possibility that other religious right leaders may be thinking the same thing as he is, it’s even more reason why we need to ensure Trump doesn’t just lose, but lose in a landslide.
