What other word is suitable for the opinion of Jim Ziegler, the Alabama state auditor who dismissed the allegations as “nonsense” before invoking Holy Writ? “Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist,” said Ziegler. “Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

St. Joseph, the chaste spouse of the Blessed Virgin, did not have marital relations with his wife before or after the birth of Our Lord. To pretend that there is some sort of meaningful similarity between his faithful protection of Mary and the infant Christ during the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt and a cowboy hat-wearing Southern lawyer’s luring a 14-year-old girl met outside a courthouse to his trailer, removing her clothes, and groping her is emetic. For an atheist to suggest as much would be disrespectful and moronic; for a Christian it is inexcusable.