THE BIGGS SMEAR: How Low Will They Go? – David Stringer, Publisher

Photo: Congressman Andy Biggs and his wife

[Editor’s Note: Prescott eNews does not endorse political candidates.  The views expressed in this article are those of the author.]

Recent mailings from the Arizona Democratic Party attacking Republican Candidate for Governor Andy Biggs as a ‘protector of a cult of pedophiles’ sets a new low in Arizona politics.  As the race between Governor Hobbs and Congressman Biggs tightens, Democrats are understandably desperate to hang on. Desperation may explain but nothing can excuse their vicious and dishonest attacks on Biggs that smear an honorable man along with an entire religion without any basis in fact.

The mailers and ads are a particularly reprehensible form of demagoguery not just because they are false, but because they are an underhanded way of reminding voters that Biggs is a Mormon. They are a covert appeal to religious prejudice. The mainstream Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) popularly known as Mormons, renounced plural marriage in 1890. They have been exclusively monogamous for well over a century. The polygamous group in Colorado City, Arizona and nearby Hildale, Utah, known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the Short Creek Community, are a splinter group who were excommunicated from the mainstream LDS church in the 1930’s. Whatever one’s views on the polygamous sect in Colorado City, Arizona, and their tolerance of plural marriage and teenage brides, there is no sense in which they can honestly be described as a “cult of pedophiles.”

The allegations against Biggs center on his votes while in the Arizona Senate against stripping Colorado City of self-government as a form of civic punishment. More recently he is said to have opposed the release of the Epstein files. Biggs is not alleged to have had any personal dealings with Epstein. His votes had nothing to do with sanctioning polygamy or protecting pedophiles. Democrats know this. But sexually tinged smears make good politics. The media knows this as well. Their failure to call out the smears as a hoax is a form of complicity in deceiving the public, or as Trump might say “Fake Media.”  Shame on them.

The term ‘pedophile’ is often used in the popular media as a tabloid smear to refer to sexual interest or contact by an adult with someone under the legal age of consent. But the age of consent, which varies from place to place and time to time, is a legal concept. Pedophilia is a medical term. It refers to a mental disorder with a precise clinical definition. The psychiatric profession’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) describes pedophilia as sexual attraction toward or activity by an adult with a prepubescent child. It has nothing to do with Fundamentalist Mormons’ practice of plural marriage or teenage brides or Mr. Epstein’s affinity for underage girls.

The age of consent is set by state legislatures. It reflects a societal judgement about when a young person has the legal right to consent to sexual activity.  But terminology describing psychiatric disorders is established by the medical profession. Mental disorders like pedophilia have nothing to do with legal concepts like age of consent laws. Arizona, along with 13 other states, currently sets the age of consent at 18 and the earliest age of marriage at 16. But there is no consensus or single age of consent in the United States. More than half of the states—29 –set the age of consent at 16, and 7 other states set it at 17. Internationally, according to the World Population Review, a widely accepted source of population statistics, age of consent laws range from a low of 14 in China, Brazil and Columbia, to age 15 in North Korea, Croatia, and Malta, to 16 years in Italy, Russia, and Israel, to 18 in the UK, Spain and France. In Mexico, like the United States, age of consent varies by state. But again, this has nothing to do with pedophilia which is a mental disorder involving sexual attraction to prepubescent children.

At the time Biggs served in the State Senate, Arizona allowed minors as young as 14 to marry with parental consent. This law has since been changed, moving the earliest age of marriage to 16. But that does not change the fact that the Fundamentalist Church in Colorado City, by practicing plural marriage and early marriage, were not engaged in pedophilia, a condition the psychiatric profession defines as sexual activity with prepubescent children. Let’s not be naïve about teenagers. Adolescent sexual activity is so common in American society that many urban school districts like the District of Columbia, and cities from Baltimore to LA, have day care centers in their public high schools to accommodate teenage moms.  At Prescott High School, pregnant teens and teens who contract venereal diseases have access to an on site nurse. Reasonable people can disagree about the moral import of these circumstances. But we should all recognize that they have nothing to do with pedophilia.

Jeffrey Epstein’s obsessive pursuit of teenage girls may have been lechery and debauchery on a pathological scale. But whatever it was, it wasn’t pedophilia. His alleged ‘victims’ were all post pubescent, sexually mature young women who were paid for their services—well paid, by all reports.

The media has done the public a great disservice by sensationalizing Epstein’s activities and misusing the terminology of clinical psychiatry to describe him as a pedophile. Worse, the Democratic party’s mailers about Biggs are misinforming the voting public and smearing an innocent man to influence an election.

The public’s appetite for sex scandals appears to be insatiable. Unfortunately for Republicans, instead of seizing the moral high ground, they too have played the game of sexual demagoguery and smears. Prominent Republicans have publicly entertained dark conspiracies about the Epstein files. They have been quick to denounce colleagues for alleged sexual misdemeanors and dragged them through ethics investigations and forced resignations. The injustice Democrats are inflicting on Congressman Biggs is not without irony. Republicans have also fed the beast of sexual smears and tabloid journalism that now threatens to devour the Biggs campaign. If Biggs loses on Tuesday, the low and baseless claim that he ‘protected a cult of pedophiles’ while in the Arizona Senate may well have made the difference. It will be a cruel irony that the culture of sexual smears and demagoguery has eaten ‘one of our own’ and destroyed the best hope of restoring Republican leadership in Arizona.