Pastor: Moore dated ‘younger ladies’ for their ‘purity’

A pastor this week defended GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore for pursuing “younger ladies,” following accusations that Moore harassed and assaulted teenage girls when he was in his 30s.

Pastor Flip Benham, who appeared alongside other anti-abortion advocates at a press conference with Moore last week, suggested Monday on an Alabama radio show that there was nothing wrong with dating younger women, saying that Moore never did so without their parents’ permission. 

“The lady that he’s married to now, Ms. Kayla, is a younger woman. He did that because there is something about a purity of a young woman, there is something that is good, that’s true, that’s straight and he looked for that,” Benham told radio hosts Matt Murphy and Andrea Lindenberg in an interview first highlighted by the liberal media watchdog Right Wing Watch. 

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Moore previously told conservative radio host Sean Hannity that he “generally didn’t” date teenage girls, but said he might have done so. Still, he said he never dated girls without their parents’ approval, and has denied allegations that he initiated sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl in 1979 when he was 32.

Benham argued that when Moore returned from his tour of service in Vietnam with the Army, many of the women his age were already taken or married, and that there was nothing wrong with dating younger women with parental permission.

“All of the ladies, or many of the ladies that he possibly could have married were not available then, they were already married, maybe, somewhere. So he looked in a different direction,” Benham said.

President Trump, who supported Moore’s primary opponent, Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.), earlier this year, appeared to throw his support behind Moore on Tuesday despite the sexual misconduct allegations from multiple women.

“We don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before leaving to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday.