Fox News guest: Seducing 14-year-olds may not have been that unusual 40 years ago

[Mariana]

35. I wasn't near Gadsden, so I never heard about him.

The thing is, most of the stuff we're heard that Moore is supposed to have done is really creepy, but not criminal. The age of consent was 16 for consensual sex with an adult of any age. Flirting with and "dating" teenage girls of any age wasn't and isn't illegal in and of itself. So, the girls would warn each other about him, and mall security would keep an eye on him, and some people might talk, but they really didn't have anything solid with which to confront him. A few of the women describe criminal sexual assault, but he denies that and his supporters believe him, and trash the women. They would have believed him then, too.

But he does seem to have stopped for the most part, at least locally. That's interesting, so what happened? Now, I'm speculating. Some of the men in the community may have finally had some seriously talks with him privately. He's not a fool. After he married, and the older he got, and the higher offices he aspired toward, the more damaging such behavior could potentially be, even that which wasn't criminal. Maybe his very young looking wife was enough to satisfy him for a long time, or maybe he went to Atlanta or Nashville or someplace else where he wasn't known to go with teenage or teenage-looking prostitutes, or maybe even he just learned to control himself better most of the time. Who knows?