r/politics Jul 29 '25

Soft Paywall Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell survivor testified she met Donald Trump at age 14

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/trump/2025/07/29/jeffrey-epstein-survivor-testified-she-met-donald-trump-at-age-14/85407198007/
55.2k Upvotes

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

47

u/Vyzantinist Arizona Jul 29 '25

Why are Republicans so obsessed with children’s bodies?

I mean, their ideology encourages them to specifically target young girls. No shade to you or anyone else, but I don't know why people aren't connecting the dots here.

Their ideology fetishizes 'pure', young, virgin girls. One of their talking heads said something like 16 is too old. If you read between the lines of their manosphere bs the ultimate 'prize' is essentially a girl barely out of school who they can groom into being a shy, submissive, breeder until they get bored with her and kick her out for a younger model. Rinse and repeat.

It's why they awkwardly shuffle their feet in silence when yet another Republican gets busted for diddling a kid and in large part why they're shrugging over the idea Trump might have too. They don't see it as a bad thing if a grown-ass man raped a girl 1, 2, 3 years under the age of consent because their ideology has been telling them for years that's a good thing.

13

u/Beasil Jul 29 '25

Yeah, another reminder that one of the no-brainer moral axioms that the Bible doesn't address at all is that it's profoundly unethical to sexually exploit children.

8

u/thrwawayyourtv Jul 29 '25 edited 29d ago

I've read some interesting material suggesting that at least some of the mentions of homosexuality in the Bible are more likely than not mistranslations of passages that are actually against an adult having sex with (raping) a child.

1

u/Dudesan 29d ago edited 29d ago

This is a Conspiracy Theory promoted by homophobes in an attempt to make their homophobia sound more acceptable. Just take a look at modern Republican rhetoric, and you'll notice how often they say "Don't worry, the people we're oppressing totally deserve to be oppressed because they're dangerous to children!"

There are plenty of issues where the mainstream christian understanding of a topic IS based on a mistranslation, but this sadly is not one of them.

See here for details.

Even if you pretend that those verses are talking about acts involving children (despite the fact that there is literally nothing in the text to indicate this), they still explicitly call for every participant to be executed. The only way for the "Think of the children!" interpretation to make any sense, even out of context, is if you believe that the proper response to learning that a child has been molested is to murder the victim.

1

u/thrwawayyourtv 29d ago

I appreciate the opportunity to read more. I haven't heard this perspective. It doesn't really matter that much to me, because I do not believe the Bible should be taken literally even if we all suddenly were able to read and understand it in its original state, or states. I will read more about it, though, because I don't want to share anything harmful. I don't know anything more than surface level, passing glance type of information so I hope my comment did not read as me fully backing the theory.

2

u/Dudesan 29d ago edited 29d ago

I'm not saying that you're a homophobe for having been tricked by this Conspiracy Theory. The problem with things sound too good to be true is that they're easy to believe, even when they're not true. Right-wing Christians are wrong about a lot of things, so it's tempting to assume that they're wrong about this one, too, rather than spending the five seconds it would take to check for yourself.