Roy Moore

Former Alabama Chief Justice and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore leaves after he speaks at a church revival, Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017, in Jackson, Ala. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

(Brynn Anderson)

For some it is too much to ask to believe the women. No matter what, they will choose to believe Roy Moore.

Belief perseverance is a powerful thing and a phenomenon observed in psychology. Once someone has taken a particular position or accepted one point of view, contrary evidence doesn't matter.

We're seeing it right now, with Moore and his faithful followers.

It doesn't matter how well Moore's first accuser, Leigh Corfman, presented herself on the Today Show. To them, she's a liar looking for fame and fortune.

It doesn't matter whether Beverly Young Nelson kept the receipts, or in this case, her high school yearbook. To them, it's an obvious forgery.

It doesn't matter how many other women come forward to say Moore solicited them too. It doesn't matter how many family members and friends of these women step out to say that they knew about this at the time, nor how many people say Moore was a known mall creeper they kept away from, even if they had to hide.

It doesn't seem to matter that, in our justice system, testimony is considered evidence, just as much as DNA. No matter how many come forward, it won't be convincing enough.

But I urge those folks who still don't believe to listen to the words.

But not hers. Or hers. Or theirs.

Listen to his.

Specifically Moore's account of how he met his now-wife, Kayla Moore.

First, read his book. In it, Moore describes how he met his wife at a Christmas party hosted by friends. He would have been 37. She was 23.

"Many years before, I had attended a dance recital at Gadsden State Junior College," Moore wrote. "I remembered one of the special dances performed by a young woman whose first and last names began with the letter 'K.' It was something I had never forgotten. Could that young woman have been Kayla Kisor?"

Moore later determined that it was.

"Long afterward, I would learn that Kayla had, in fact, performed a special dance routine at Gadsden State years before," he wrote.

Take a second to think about what's being said here. Moore first took notice of Kayla at a dance recital?

Perhaps you're wondering what "many years" means, and I wondered that too. Luckily, Moore again has cleared that up for us.

In an interview Moore gave earlier this year, he gave a similar account, but for one detail.

"It was, oh gosh, eight years later, or something, I met her," Moore said. "And when she told me her name, I remembered 'K. K.,' and I said, 'Haven't I met you before?'"

It's a simple matter of subtraction. When Roy Moore first took notice of Kayla she would have been as young as 15.

There's a little fuzziness, to be sure, in the timeline. There's the "or something" Moore fudges with in the interview. Eight years before could have been slightly too early to put Moore in Gadsden, he started work as an deputy district attorney there in 1977.

So maybe she was 15, or maybe she was 16. But still, here is a grown man at about 30 years old attending a girls' dance recital, and doing what exactly?

This would have been 1976 or 1977. (My best guess is the latter.)

It was in 1977, Wendy Miller says, when Moore first approached her at the Gadsden Mall, where she was working as a Santa's helper. She was 14 at the time.

It was in 1977, Beverly Young Nelson says, when Moore assaulted her behind the Old Hickory House restaurant, where she worked as a waitress. She was 16 at the time.

It was in 1977, Gina Richardson says, when Moore called her at her high school to ask her on a date, a date in which she says he forcefully kissed and left her scared of him. She was 18 at the time.

Is it too much to believe that Roy Moore wasn't praying for women then but preying on women?

Is it too much to believe these women?

If so, then you don't have to. You just have to believe Roy Moore.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group. You can follow his work on Facebook through Reckon by AL.com.