THE late Rev. Ian Paisley was fond of quoting Matthew 7:5 when accusing his political opponents of hypocrisy: "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
How then must he be spinning in his grave to see the party he founded hoist by its own petard — another saying of which he was inordinately fond — by its own breathtaking hypocrisy over the Jeffrey Donaldson scandal.
We refer not to the fact that the DUP welcomed into its ranks, elevated to ministerial office and then crowned as leader a paedophile. For in truth, it appears that the DUP, as with all who encountered the Lagan Valley MP, were duped by his holier-than-thou demeanour and that his sordid secret remained just that until his victims came forward.
Therefore, at this stage, though much probing remains to be done, it appears that the DUP had no knowledge that its prize spokesperson was also a child sex abuser.
What some party members did know, however, was that the DUP politician who presented himself to the public as a pillar of rectitude, a scourge of the LGBT community, a defender of the sanctity of marriage and the epitome of wholesome Christian values was in fact a boozy homewrecker who had sexual relations with both men and women.
There is always a gap between how politicians present themselves to the electorate and who they really are — after all, despite their self-praising Facebook posts and vainglorious tweets, our political representatives are just as human as the rest of us.
And humans have faults.
That much is a given.
However, it's also understood that when some in the DUP allowed Jeffrey Donaldson to engage in subterfuge, lies and cover-up to present a fraudulent face to the public then a line was crossed from harmless PR 'handling' to rancid hypocrisy.
Worse than this is the simple fact that the party has majored in calling out others for their alleged unsuitability for high office. How many DUP frontrunners made their name harassing others who they accused of not reaching the high standards of probity they claimed to uphold?
That's worth bearing in mind when we next hear the DUP call for the resignation of a rival politician who makes an errant social post or demand the firing of an official who they decide is not fit for public office. Or indeed when a DUP MLA next mounts his high horse and challenges the right of former republican prisoners to sit on government boards.
By colluding in the cover-up of Jeffrey Donaldson's true character as a drunken sex pest the DUP has elevated brass-neckery to Olympian standards.
What else they knew and how deep and significant the fallout from further revelations will be, no-one yet knows. But what we do know at this time about that beam that Rev Paisley liked to talk about is that there's one in the DUP's eye big enough to be seen from space.
