I am confused with the syntactic structure of the sentence in bold, especially the last part. Can anyone help explain?
An intention to do something wrong or against the law is rarely considered as bad as when the intention gets fulfilled. If we could be prosecuted solely for our intentions, however distant from success, we should almost all have criminal records. A comparison may be made with those religious doctrines which seem to collapse psychological states, including ones even more remote from actions than intentions, into the actions which would typically result. Following the New Testament, an American president, Jimmy Carter, accepted that lusting in one’s heart for a woman other than one’s wife is morally the same as the act of adultery. More recently, some extreme feminists have bizarrely claimed that watching the portrayal of rape is the same as raping. ——the big think book