Members: Login | Register | Member List
Previous: Prayer requestNext: Iraq and the UN
Back to main
Wait a minute…
I thought that the clergy sex-abuse crisis wasn’t about homosexuality, but a different predilection called pedophilia. But every story I’ve read about Geoghan’s murder makes a big deal about how he was killed by a man who hates homosexuals. It looks like we have warring impulses in the media. On the one hand, they don’t want to identify Geoghan—a child molester—with the protected status of homosexual, yet they also want to portray intolerance of homosexuality as homophobia and the natural precursor to violence against gays, i.e. hate crimes.
I wonder if we’ll hear from GLAAD, Human Rights Watch, and other gay activist groups decrying the murder of a homosexual because of his sexual “disorientation.”
-->
COMMENTS
What’s your point, Todd?
Posted by Domenico Bettinelli on 08/26/03 at 09:55 AM Oh, I’m not disputing that he was an authentic pedophile. But he was also a homosexual, which much of the media was careful not to mention before his murder.
Just because he was a pedophile doesn’t preclude him from being a homosexual. The point you’re thinking of is that, unlike ephebophilia, a pedophile who abuses children of the same-sex is not necessarily gay. But he can be gay and that homosexuality could be a factor in his pathology.
Give me a break, Buck. That’s the same baloney the P.C. media gives us: “Don’t say anything bad about gays or other people will kill them.”
The fact is that there is a thriving thread within the homosexual subculture that views sex with boys as a good. In addition, most of the sexual abuse of children by priests was of teenage boys, not pre-pubescent children and is thus not really pedophilia, but ephebophilia, which just means sex with young adults.
The fact is that Geoghan was gay and a pedophile, but the media didn’t think the latter fact was important enough to mention until they could use his death as a homophobia lesson.
I’m not confused. Geoghan was both homosexual and pedophile. That’s not an opinion or confusion. I don’t condone gay bashing, but neither is saying that homosexuality is disordered gay bashing.
Even if most Klansmen are white, that doesn’t mean that mainstream “white” culture (even if there were such a thing) condones or tolerates the Klan.
Britney Spears is 21 and even if she were under age, just about all Christian and conservative leaders would not condone underage sex between adult men and underage girls.
Jack,
The distinction is a psychological one that I think actually puts more pressure on adults who have sex with teens. Sex with prepubescents may be a psychological compulsion, but sex with teens is a choice made with a freer will. (Note I said “freer”. Sex with pre-pubescents is also a free will choice.)
It’s common practice for news stories to give details on accused murderers’ motives, so when reporters tell the public that the prisoner hated gays and in fact was in prison for murdering a gay man, why does that constitute “making a big deal” out of something you’d rather not emphasize?
The point is that the accused murderer made the connection between pedophilia and homosexuality in the priest’s case, and followed through on what was typical behavior for him.
There are many, many people in this society that equate homosexuality with wanting to rape every male that moves, especially young boys. I grew up when that idea was common, and it still exists.
To me, that kind of thinking, if you want to call it thinking, is in fact a big, very ugly and unacceptable deal, and should be confronted whenever and wherever it exists.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/26/03 at 02:14 PM Ray,
You mistake my point. When Geoghan was on trial for molesting kids, the major media never mentioned that Geoghan was homosexual. But when he’s killed in prison by a gay-hater that is immediately brought up and given prominence because it gives another chance for the media to perpetuate the notion that violence against gays is common.
I’ll bet that, other than reading it on some blogs last week, no one heard the case about the janitor at a church who was beat up by three gay men because the pastor spoke about homosexuality being immoral. That’s not P.C.
It would be wrong to say that every homosexual wants rape every other man, but it isn’t wrong to say that the sexual appetite seems to be primary motivator in the gay subculture, because that is the primary self-identification for them; it’s what sets them apart.
But that is beside the point that Geoghan was homosexual and it only became significant for most reporters when he was attacked because of it, not when he was molesting other males, some of them below the age of puberty.
Mr. DeWalt,
first, thank you for using my words as the conclusion of your response to me. I’m flattered.
But not persuaded. I’ve read your posts here, and if you want to take the time to provide bibliographic information on your sources I’ll have a look at them on my own and see if I think they send the message you say they do.
You don’t even cite page numbers for your quotations, nor do you back up your assertions that certain texts are “leading homosexual newspapers” or
“premier academic journal of the mainstream homosexual world.”
How do you know? Where is this “world” you speak of?
The idea that certain gay political activists speak for all gay men, as you have implied, has no support in your post.
You are unusually interested in this topic, and you either researched the information on your own looking only for those things that would back up your views, or you lifted the information from somewhere else on the internet.
And when someone like you accuses me of being in denial, I take that as a compliment. Yes, I do deny that your views are valid, and I deny that you have any moral standing, because the only thing you can think of when people are being murdered due to their sexuality is how you are being victimized by “PC.”
If PC means that people like you can no longer spread your bile and bigotry with impunity, and that other people who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans will stand up to you, then PC is a positive boon.
You will be held responsible for what you say. People who are threated by your abuse will call you on it.
I came onto this blog because I read about it on National Review Online, another site that promotes hatred of gays and lesbians, and I’m not surprised that they like what goes on here.
Why do I check into NRO and sites like this? I like to know what the enemy’s up to.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/26/03 at 03:11 PM Perhaps dramatist Larry Kramer put it most succinctly, when he wrote:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“In those cases where children do have sex with their homosexual elders… I submit that often, very often, the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it, either because of a natural curiosity… or because he or she is homosexual and innately knows it. ... And unlike girls or women forced into rape or traumatized, most gay men have warm memories of their earliest and early sexual encounters; when we share these stories with each other, they are invariably positive ones.”
~ Larry Kramer, writer and founder of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP), in Reports from the Holocaust, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.
Copyright © NAMBLA, 2003. All rights reserved.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kelly, am I correct in assuming that your post was made tongue in cheek?
Larry Kramer’s post is damning in light of the issue at hand: Joseph Druce’s repeated molestation at the hands of homosexual men while he himself was young and vulnerable.
Clearly, Larry Kramer’s comment is a self-serving denial of the experience of too many young boys. [“Young meat” in Phillip Larkin’s memorable phrase.] It denies all shame, all confusion, all subsequent sexual maladjustments and unfocused anger. It denies all trauma, however disguised, that any parent intuitively understands.
The discussion began with Dom’s comment on the “warring impulses in the media.” And it’s true. As long as Geoghan was that nasty pedophile shunted around by that nasty Catholic Church, which is so nasty toward gays, it was easy. Geoghan’s bad because he molested children. The Church is bad because of how it handled Geoghan, and also because of how it’s so mean to gays.
Enter Geoghan’s murderer, who is described as a “homophobe” and suddenly the media is on a slippery slope. Because if the murderer murdered because he “hates gays,” then we’ve got a whole new and confusing ballgame. There is definitely an “uh-oh” moment here. What does the media do now? My guess? A hasty backing off of the “homophobe” aspect, possibly substituting it with the “what’s wrong with our correctional facilities” angle, although that’s just a guess.
Buck, NAMBLA may or may not be accepted by “the gay community (as a group)”—whatever that means—but 20 years ago, it certainly received sympathetic treatment from, for example, The New York Times. Now, the NYT might not want to remember the item that follows, but you can bet NAMBLA isn’t forgetting. Note the slur on the “puritanical” Massachusetts laws on sexuality.
~~
DUDLEY CLENDINEN
Special to the New York Times
BOSTON, Dec. 31 - Four years ago this month, after two dozen men were indicted for sex crimes in the nearby town of Revere, a conference was held downtown at the Community Church of Boston. About 30 men [and boys] stayed on to talk of the difficult issue discussed at the conference, and they decided to form an organization to promote understanding of their kind of love and to seek a change in the law. Thus, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where many of the laws on sexual conduct date from the Puritan period, was born the most provocative name of any homosexual organization in the United States: the North American Man-Boy Love Association, dedicated to the proposition that state laws establishing a sexual age of consent should be repealed. ...
~ from The New York Times, January 1, 1983 (page 1).
Copyright © NAMBLA, 2003. All rights reserved.
~~~~
-more-
NAMBLA is, recall, an organization associated with Father Paul Shanley. When Father Shanley was pulled from his “gay ministry” by Cardinal Medeiros, and when he took what is now Saint Clement’s Eucharistic Shrine away from the “Catholic” gay group known as Dignity, the Boston Globe was sympathetic toward Father Shanley and critical of the Cardinal.
Something I rather doubt the Globe would like chatted up today.
No, I’m not, as the popular charge goes, “blaming the media.” But I see no sin in challenging it. That’s how this discussion got started, and I think it’s a valid one.
This is a blog by a Catholic about Catholic things so don’t get all huffy and disjointed when someone quotes from Scripture and the Church’s teaching. As a Jew, you can believe what you want, but as Catholics we believe certain things to be true. You should be tolerant of our faith.
Hi Buck,
I’ve got it on pretty good authority—Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul (hey, can I drop names or what!) that you won’t go to Hell for being Jewish.
That said…a gentle reminder, or perhaps simply as an advisory note:
I’m sure you didn’t intend it to be, but your statement above reads to me, anyway, like an anti-Catholic slur. More than that, it reads, to me anyway, like an attempt to paint Catholic teaching, in this case on homosexual behavior, as somehow anti-Semitic.
In my opinion, that’s not fair.
Hey Buck?
Last time I looked, nobody was “creating laws and public policy based on Catholic teaching.”
Rest assured.
Again Buck.
Nobody’s “creating laws and public policy based on Catholic teaching.”
I do happen to know of cities or towns with blue laws. (Heck, I live in Boston!) Trust me on this one…the Vatican didn’t have anything to do with them.
As for the Vatican document—and there are many of them—I only wish that what you seem convinced of were true.
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Comments are being moderated. After you submit your comment it could take up to a couple hours, but usually only a few minutes, before it will appear. Thank you for your patience. If you have any questions, you may contact Domenico Bettinelli.
