Evangelical leaders condemned Clinton’s misogyny while blaming abuse victims at home.

Evidence

Among Clinton’s evangelical critics, it appears that their concern with Clinton’s predatory behavior was more about Clinton than about predatory behavior. Within their own circles, evangelicals didn’t have a strong record when it came to defending women against harassment and abuse. In the 1980s, for example, Dobson had recommended a healthy skepticism toward certain allegations of domestic violence. In Love Must Be Tough (1983), he warned of women who “deliberately ‘baited’” their husbands into hitting them, “verbally antagoniz[ing]” them until they got “the prize” they sought: a bruise they could parade before “neighbors, friends, and the law” to gain a “moral advantage,” and perhaps also justify an otherwise unbiblical escape from marriage through divorce. This argument remained unchanged in his 1996 edition of the book. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 335

Categorization

• CANDY: Dobson’s framing of abused wives as baiting their husbands into hitting them for ‘moral advantage’ is a striking, tweetable specimen of victim-blaming.
• SEED: The ‘more about Clinton than about predatory behavior’ framing is the sharpest contradiction in the chapter — an angle on evangelical selective moral outrage worth an essay comparing their Clinton-era and Trump-era rhetoric.