In a scene from “I, Claudius,” a 70s television drama based on the life of the Roman emperor who ascended to power after Caligula’s death, Claudius relates the dismay of Julius Caesar when the emperor discovers the extent of his daughter’s promiscuity. The accused are lined up before Caesar and confess their sins.

Finally, after hearing out all the fornicators, a frustrated and overwhelmed Caesar exclaims, “Is there anyone in Rome who has not slept with my daughter?”

A similar question could be asked of the Hollywood and Washington swamp critters coming out of the woodwork either to confess their sins or to expose those who sinned against them: Is there anyone who has not been harassed by or forced to sleep with people like Harvey Weinstein?

As Weinstein’s accusers have stepped out into the media klieg lights, Babylon’s moral night creatures are either scurrying back into the shadows of hoped for anonymity or are preemptively coming out of the bushes to confess their sins. Alex Baldwin admits he has bullied women. Arnold Schwarzenegger says his cheating on his spouse was his biggest mistake. Ben Affleck confesses he has erred, and even George H.W. Bush admits -- at age 93 -- that he patted women’s rears.

However, even more ominously for Hollywood, the lowlifes who have a penchant for pedophilia are being exposed by Cory Feldman, while at the same time Kevin Spacey, who is accused of molesting underage boys, provides ratification of Feldman’s accusations. Both men present a worry for Hollywood’s LGBT communities, as they have always sought to separate themselves from accusations of pedophilia, insisting that gay sex is practiced among adults who are completely consensual partners who wish to be married for life.

Amidst all the accusations, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that professional saviors of actors’ and politicians’ reputations and careers, seeing the likes of Weinstein going to the block, have advised their clients to get ahead of the coming storms of judgment by preemptively confessing, savagely beating their breasts while at the same time they beat a judicious but hopefully temporary retreat from the public gaze.

In Kevin Spacey’s case, he is being erased from Hollywood’s collective memory.

Literally.

His appearances in Netflix’s “House of Cards” are cancelled. His shoots in Ridley Scott’s upcoming film All the Money in the World are being expurgated, with actor Christopher Plummer taking his place. One is reminded of others who have been erased from history, like Nikolai Yezhov, Leon Trotsky and Bo Gu were eliminated from the collective memories of Communist regimes.

For the truth is that Spacey, who followed Hollywood’s political correct rules in “coming out” in order to ransom himself, must wonder what he has done wrong, much as the accused Soviet and Maoist show trials must have wondered why their heads were suddenly in the noose.

After all, the milieu in which Spacey lives and works has promoted films and lifestyles that have seen no particular wrong in promoting sexual activities of all types. Hollywood’s films are routinely vehicles for celebrating every permutation of the sexual revolution, as many producers have bought into cheap philosophical musings on post-modernist deconstruction of everything, including sexual morality.

The questions are, “Why Spacey? Why now?”

Not that most will feel sorry for him, but the actor must be confused, for it wasn’t so long ago that Roman Polanski was applauded in absentia at the Oscars, receiving a standing ovation from Meryl Streep, even though he had raped a drugged 13-year-old girl.

Why was Polanski applauded? For one thing, Polanski was and for some still is considered an artiste to whom no moral judgments apply. His creative genius apparently puts him beyond the condemnation doled out to less talented mortals. Polanski escapes condemnation much like the artist Paul Gauguin, who though he deserted his wife and children and took child mistresses to whom he gave the gift of syphilis, is forgiven. The greatness of his art has been deemed to transcend his pusillanimous sex life.

The fact is that Hollywood’s condemnation of Spacey, who apparently is truly guilty of child abuse, is completely arbitrary. Hollywood has no real moral basis for the finger pointing, for to judge justly requires a knowledge of right and wrong; and Hollywood in general does not believe in right and wrong, particularly when it comes to sexual behavior.

What’s left in the absence of a moral thermometer is total arbitrariness. Arbitrariness provokes fear, not true repentance. Arbitrary judgment and fear are always the results when the concepts of moral truth are infinitely flexible.

Since it is unlikely that genuine moral indignation is behind the current show trials now being played out in Hollywood (and in D.C.), we have to ask ourselves, to what end are all these displays of accusation and repentance being employed? What is truly feared? What sacrificial lambs are being given up in order to protect people behind the curtain? Who is being protected while a few are led to the gallows?

It is hard not to come to the conclusion that Spacey and others are being sacrificed in order that more powerful people who do not want their sexual proclivities revealed are not exposed. Certainly, Elijah Wood and Corey Feldman, along with other former child actors, have stated that pedophile rings including some of the world’s most powerful, famous and influential figures not only exist, but continue to operate freely because the deeds done in secret are covered up.

One need only think of the Rochdale sex abuse scandal in England. Police and other law officials looked the other way while young girls were drugged and passed around to “Asian” men who raped them. According to reports, some of the guilty men are still walking around freely. 

The list of powerful people who are child abusers is no doubt quite long. There are still unanswered questions about Jeffrey Epstein’s “Lolita Express.” Who among the famous are implicated in the child abuse happening on Epstein’s private island? Is it fair to ask just who was involved in the orgies aboard Epstein’s jet,” which according to the Daily Mail and other publications, Bill Clinton boarded 26 times in three years -- apparently accompanied at least once by Spacey?  

Isn’t it fair to demand reporters and law enforcement do some serious investigating of sex crimes committed against child actors in Hollywood? Isn’t it fair to demand Hollywood, which has produced exposés like Spotlight, which documented the sex abuse scandals afflicting the Roman Catholic church, turn that same glaring spotlight on its own denizens of the child sex underworld? If the demand is that Catholic priests clean up what Hollywood deems as unspeakable acts, isn’t it fair to ask Hollywood to uncover its own scandals while demonstrating genuine change in the way it operates? Hypocritically targeting a few lowlifes while indulging in ritualistic breast-beating is not enough. There has to be real change, including stopping the glorification of sexual deviance in films -- starting with romanticizing pedophilia.

Time will tell. In the meantime, most will not be convinced Hollywood’s repentance is genuine by the social execution of a few stars like the odious Kevin Spacey.

Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, which awarded her the prize for excellence in systematic theology. She is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com