Bill Donohue Says "Relax, It's Just Sex."

Tim Cavanaugh | November 12, 2004

Just when I think I'm over Catholic League president William Donohue, he wins me back. Today's Donohue nugget:

"Why are so many in the entertainment industry angry with the less than one percent of priests today who have been accused of sexual molestation—almost all of whom are homosexuals, not pedophiles—when their favorite sexologist is a sado-masochistic, child-abusing homosexual? Why are the same people so enamored of a film that shows a ten-year old boy stripping naked so he can join an adult woman in a tub? The former reference is to the movie, 'Kinsey'; the latter, 'Birth.'"

Hey Bill, I'll take a crack at that one: Because the projects Cardinal Law greenlighted for John Geoghan and Paul Shanley involved actual underaged American citizens out here in "meatspace." The two movies are simulations that won't be seen by anybody who doesn't want to see them (and in both cases, even if underaged citizens want to see them, they must be accompanied by a parent or guardian). Relax, it's just a movie!

Also, pay attention to the papers for God's sake: Birth got panned by the anti-Kidmanites in the liberal media.

Why I'll always love Bill Donohue.

Comments

|11.12.04 @ 4:14PM|#

wily will donohue is certainly a cad.

and by cad i mean cunt. is there anything he can't apologize for? i mean, some of those guys were only moved two or three times to prey on new victims. what's everyone so upset about?

|11.12.04 @ 4:23PM|#

"Why are so many in the entertainment industry angry with the less than one percent of priests today who have been accused of sexual molestation�almost all of whom are homosexuals, not pedophiles"

Uh, wouldn't they be pedophiles regardless of their sexual preference? Last I checked, pedophile = child molester.

Mark LaRochelle|11.12.04 @ 4:23PM|#

Um, Kinsey and his underage victims actually existed in meatspace.

Jeff|11.12.04 @ 4:25PM|#

Does anyone know if there has ever been a clergy-motif porn film?

Warren|11.12.04 @ 4:42PM|#

"...almost all of whom are homosexuals, not pedophiles"

WTF? Is there a bid story that I missed? All the 'bad priest' stories I've heard of about priests that molest underage boys (and to a lesser extent, girls). The problem is the under age part. Isn't having sex with little boys the very definition of pedophile?

|11.12.04 @ 4:53PM|#

IF the priests were just homosexuals, we would be outraged, or amused, over the hypocrisy. No, these preists were pedophiles of the hellish kind positively reinforced by the church brass.

Jesse Walker|11.12.04 @ 5:35PM|#

WTF? Is there a bid story that I missed? All the 'bad priest' stories I've heard of about priests that molest underage boys (and to a lesser extent, girls). The problem is the under age part. Isn't having sex with little boys the very definition of pedophile?

Most of the cases have involved teenagers, not pre-pubescent children. I assume that Donohue is referring to that.

raymond|11.12.04 @ 5:51PM|#

pædophilia

|11.12.04 @ 11:51PM|#

Well, the fact that there are no victims of Kinsey would be a good place to start.

http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/about/cont-95frc.html

All a bunch of right-wing bullcrap.

Larry A|11.13.04 @ 9:00PM|#

The problem I have with the Catholic church on this issue isn't the 1% of priests who abused children. Pedophilia is almost guaranteed to happen anywhere there are adults interacting with kids.

What burns me is the widespread effort by church leadership that kept covering up the problem to the extent that they moved known repeat offenders into new parishes, providing them a fresh crop of victims.

Those are the folks that most deserve to rot in prison.

raymond|11.14.04 @ 4:38AM|#

Most of the incidents were not "pedophilia" - from what I've read in the news. Seminarians, for example, who had sex with priests are not victims of pedophiles. They may be victims of abuse of power, but that's a different matter entirely.


What burns me is the widespread effort by church leadership that kept covering up the problem to the extent that they moved known repeat offenders into new parishes, providing them a fresh crop of victims.

The Church is all about sin and forgiveness. Forgiveness of sin is why Christ came.

60. Q. Did God abandon man after he fell into sin?

A. God did not abandon man after he fell into sin, but promised him a Redeemer, who was to satisfy for man's sin and reopen to him the gates of heaven.

61. Q. Who is the Redeemer?

A. Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the Redeemer of mankind.

102. Q. Which are the chief effects of the Redemption?

A. The chief effects of the Redemption are two: The satisfaction of God's justice by Christ's sufferings and death, and the gaining of grace for men. (Baltimore Catechism)

In the Church, God forgives sin through (usually) His ministers - who are bound by the "secret of the confessional". / Once a sin is forgiven, it's forgiven.

Extra-marital sex is - for all sorts of reasons - "sinful".

Any sinful act - criminal or not - can be forgiven. Man is capable, with God's grace, of being saved. "Go, and sin no more."


...the widespread effort by church leadership...

I don't know that that's a fair formulation of the situation. It seems to me that individual bishops dealing with individual priests tried to do "the right thing"... individually. Did the "church leaders" in the news actually do the right thing? Well, obviously many of them blew it. But that doesn't mean there was some sort of conspiracy.


...church leadership that kept covering up the problem...

Avoiding scandal was one reason for the "cover-up", I should imagine. Keeping the nose of the state out of Church affairs was probably another. The manpower shortage was a third. (Misplaced) compassion, a fourth.

Another consideration is the believability of the accusation. Not all accusations are founded in fact. Not all the people accused of sorcery by the innocent children of Salem were actual witches.


...providing them a fresh crop of victims.

Inadvertently, I'm sure.


Those are the folks that most deserve to rot in prison.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

Some of them may deserve to lose their administrative posts because of their ineptitude, but prison? Surely not.

|11.14.04 @ 8:15PM|#

See some statements by John Bancroft, Director of the Kinsey Institute, at

http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/about/publicstatements.html

These statements, by one of Kinsey's own supporters and the head of his Institute, implicate Kinsey in (a) scientific fraud, and (b) a cover-up of pedophilia that makes the Roman Catholic cover-up look like (pardon the phrase) child's play. Some excerpts:

"I decided to check on the sources of this information [in the first Kinsey Report] and found that, without any doubt, all of the information reported in Tables 31-34 came from the carefully documented records of one man. From 1917 until the time that Kinsey interviewed him in the mid-1940s, this man had kept notes on a vast array of sexual experiences, involving not only children but adults of both sexes.

"Kinsey was clearly impressed by the systematic way he kept his records, and regarded them as of considerable scientific interest. Clearly, his description in the book of the source of this data was misleading, in that he implied that it had come from several men rather than one, although it is likely that information elsewhere in this chapter, on the descriptions of different types of orgasm, was obtained in part from some of these other nine men.

"I do not know why Kinsey was unclear on this point; it was obviously not to conceal the origin of the information from criminal sexual involvement with children, because that was already quite clear. Maybe it was to conceal the single source, which otherwise might have attracted attention to this one man with possible demands for his identification (demands which have now occurred even though he is long dead). It would be typical of Kinsey to be more concerned about protecting the anonymity of his research subjects (and convincing the reader of the scientific value of the information) than protecting himself from the allegations that eventually followed."

|11.14.04 @ 8:19PM|#

In other words, saying Kinsey wasn't a pedophile would be like protesting that Bernard Law wasn't a pedophile. Kinsey knew the identity of a serial pedophile and disguised the person's identity with scientific fraud. Kinsey's supporter Bancroft say, in effect, "Kinsey wasn't a pedophile-he was just perpetrating a cover-up!"

|11.15.04 @ 9:59AM|#

Look, anyone advocating anything other than man on top of woman sex is going to be the enemy of Catholic Church, etc. The main Church hierarchy is full to the brim with reactionaries who want the government to regulate human sexuality.

...almost all of whom are homosexuals, not pedophiles...

As I recall, even the Catholic Church's own investigation stated that while a large portion of the offenders were homosexuals, that a large portion of them were also heterosexuals. So they weren't "almost all" homosexuals (I thought you go to hell if you lie). It was also clear from the report that most homosexuals who are priests also aren't offenders.

|11.15.04 @ 10:01AM|#

Oh, and another thing, the report clearly stated that what was important was not sexuality but whether the individual had a propensity to offend, and that merely forbidding homosexuals from the priesthood would not solve the problem, but only hide it.

|11.15.04 @ 10:06AM|#

if kinsey helped him move from state to state and put him in direct contact with children by giving him a job, you'd have a 1:1 analogy. not that kinsey didn't have a severe moral hole in the head in this case, necessary as the rest of his work was culturally.

had this happened to a lesser religion - i.e. one with fewer lawyers - i imagine there'd be far less hand-wringing about whose "misplaced compassion" went where. and a lot more prison time being handed out. we're moving onto multiple decades in some of these cases, especially on long island. financial problems ensuing, which of course affect ancillary services first, like homes for unwed mothers and the like.

|11.15.04 @ 12:15PM|#

As Jesse said, people who have sex with teenagers are not, by definition, pedophiles. They might need a serious beating but unlike those who defile little kids, it isn't necessary to leave their mutilated bodies in the desert for the vultures and coyotes.

Granted, teens may sometimes be easily manipulated, particularly when some trusted priest is invoking God while performing the Sacrament of the White Owl. OTOH, every teen knows that something just ain't quite right when the priest sticks his hand down your pants. After the second or third time it happens there has to be some degree of meaningful consent that simply doesn't cognitively exist when the priest does the same thing to a child of six or eight.

Tim's right about the choices viewers make about movies but Donahue is right as well, Hollywood, taken as a whole, leans toward raging hypocrisy. Given that entertainers often have big mouths (in Julia Robert's case that would be literally and figuratively) it is important for others to mention the hypocrisy from time to time.

Too bad that Donahue had to point that out from his glass basement while showering but I haven't quite gotten past the free ride that Mahoney and the rest of the CatLickers gave to that 1% of priests who took the blood of Christ and promised to do right in this world.

But then again, in practice, Catholics can do pretty much whatever they want so long as they fess up every Saturday.

Suck a kids dick? Hey, I'm just a sinner and God will forgive me come Saturday night. Do it again next week? Click on Auto Repeat....

And you guys think fundies are sickos?

raymond|11.15.04 @ 12:58PM|#

After the second or third time it happens there has to be some degree of meaningful consent

"Meaningful consent."

Obedience never fails to surprise me. A person in a position of power says: "Get out of the car", and mature, reasoning adults get out of their cars. He says: "Everyone sit down", and twenty rambunctious adolescents with minds of their own sit down. She says: "Turn the electric-shock switch all the way to the right", and intelligent psych students are ready to torture.

When a person obeys, he is, of course, exercising his free will. There is _always_ a choice.

Unearned trust surprises me, too. We trust teachers we don't know to tell us the truth. We trust people dressed in lab coats not to let us kill their experimental subjects. We trust priests to know what God wants.

A believing adolescent is particularly vulnerable to issues of obedience and trust. "Meaningful consent" just isn't part of their artillery in such instances.


Catholics can do pretty much whatever they want so long as they fess up every Saturday.

That's not how it works.

|11.16.04 @ 1:44AM|#

"necessary as the rest of [Kinsey's] work was culturally."

Wait, I thought Kinsey was a *scientist* who simply investigated his subject and published the results without fear or favor. From a purely *scientific* poit of view, the only relevant question about Kinsey's data and conclusions is, "are they accurate?" Whether the information is culturally useful or not is a completely different question.

I mean, scientists aren't supposed to give us culturally useful information about, say, electrons. They're supposed to give us *accurate* information, let the chips fall where they may.

Surely you aren't suggesting that the value of Kinsey's work should be measured, not by its accoracy (or lack thereor) but by whether it produced certain effects on the culture?

Perhaps I have mistaken your meaning.

|11.16.04 @ 1:45AM|#

That's "accuracy," not "accoracy." I strive to be accorate at all times.

|4.28.05 @ 2:54AM|#

Raymond's right, that's not how it works. It doesn't mean crap if you aren't sincere. have fun going under.

By the way, try not to show your ignornace.