King did a lot of good work in the world, despite any personal flaws, and I believe that he has gone on to new and ever more enlightened adventures.
And I am fine with forgiving - or not knowing about - marital infidelity. Famous men, traveling without their wives... I can let that go.
But if it is proven he was really abusive to women (cheering and laughing at a rape, for example), it tarnished every good he’s done IN MY MIND. I can’t enjoy Michael Jackson’s music right now, or Bill Cosby’s humor, even though if both were attributed to someone else and played to me I’d like them.
In my mind, there can exist “great, flawed” but there can’t exist “great, evil.”
I find categorizing serious grievances as ‘less than perfect’ ‘a lil flawed’ and ‘not a saint’ completely absurd and disgusting when coming from a conservative forum. It is the talk of the Pussy-hat lib/progressive women’s rally types.
1. Rounding up church ladies for sex and discussing who is destined for lesbian acts, sodomy, bj, or regular sex is the talk of a pimp or the director of pornography.
2. Watching and coaching a woman being raped is a criminal offense.
3. Coercing unwilling women to perform ‘un-natural acts’ is sexual assault.
4. Slapping or tossing a women across the room is simple assault.
5. Plagiarizing one’s way through college, seminarian school and graduate school is academic theft and grounds for expulsion.
6. Plagiarizing Baptist sermons, speeches and book material outside of school is punishable by copyright laws as intellectual theft.
7. Using the church pulpit as a hunting ground for scouting fresh orgy material is in the realm of Satan.
I don’t know, Yaelle. He may have been unfaithful, a womanizer; but he was hated and feared by several factions - some of them pretty vicious themselves - and it’s hard to know whether to believe these more extreme accusations.