(Looks like the video has disappeared again. I'm not going to do somersaults to try to fix it. Beauchamp has it imbedded as well -- maybe.) (Strangely enough, it shows up when I preview the post, but not when I post it. Maybe it will come back on its own.)
From Beauchamp:
"The Catholic Church has a homosexual problem, not a pedophilia problem..." -Bill Donohue
Uh, the Catholic Church is experiencing the insidious results of repressing human sexuality in all its consensual adult STRAIGHT and gay diversity. The absolutely unacceptable sickness of pedophilia is the result of that repression, Bill. Of course, to allow someone to make that kind of statement on their network, without challenging it, makes CBN culpable in spreading hateful lies about the LGBT community.
To expect CBN to treat gays fairly is on the verge of fantasy. No, wait -- it's there. Donohue, of course, is going to get no objections to his rant from this group. Don't expect anything rational there.
Beauchamp makes one error in his post, which I called attention to in the comments:
Anyone for schooling Bill on the percentage of gay to straight pedophiles? It hovers right around 10%. Pedophilia is an equal opportunity sickness affecting both the gay and straight community in the same ratio in which we naturally exist, and the Catholic Church has a PEDOPHILIA problem.
The actual figure for pedophiles with a same-sex (male/male) adult sexual orientation seems to hover between 1.5-3%, making us underrepresented as against our percentage of the general population (which I'm taking as around 5%, based on studies indicating 3-6%). Jim Burroway has an exhaustive post on the subject here, extensively documented with (gasp!) real studies, which is not something you're going to find Bill Donohue using.
The psychology behind this right-wing conflation of gay men and pedophiles is not hard to figure out. Aside from the obvious propaganda/fear-mongering value ("Save the children!"), as Burroway points out there is a basis for honest confusion, stemming at least in part from the way researchers use the term "homosexual." (It's somewhat kin to the way scientists use the word "theory" and the way creationists use it.) His commentary is worth reading, because it is exhaustive, it's based in reality, and it's full of ammunition against the likes of Bill Donohue and Pope Whats-His-Name XVI (who, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger and the whole pedophilia scandal in the Church broke wide open, immediately blamed it on the gays.)
I did some digging in my own archives on this subject, and ran across some interesting reading on child sexual abuse, homosexuality, and the age of consent in an article titled "Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse: Science, Religion, and the Slippery Slope" by Mark E. Pietrzyk:
Executive Summary
In response to the scandal involving former Congressman Mark Foley, a number of conservative religious groups have claimed that homosexuals pose a substantially greater risk of committing sexual abuse against children than heterosexuals, and have issued papers citing a number of scientific studies to support these claims. However, when one examines the studies cited in these papers, one finds that the religious right has engaged in some serious distortion of the works of others. The scientists who authored the studies made no such claim about homosexuals posing a greater threat to children, and in fact in many cases argued the opposite.
In addition, many in the religious right have employed a version of the “slippery slope” argument, charging that the gay rights movement has led inevitably to tolerance for pedophilia by eroding all traditional norms of sexual behavior. However, the “slippery slope” argument is based on the false premise that the protection of children from sexual activity is a long-standing part of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which has only recently come under assault as a result of the gay rights movement. In fact, throughout most of history, the Judeo-Christian tradition tolerated and even approved of sexual relations between adult males and girls of twelve years of age or even younger. The contemporary taboo against sex between adults and minors developed only in the late nineteenth century, as societies became increasingly committed to the ideals of individual rights and personal autonomy, which led to concern about the possibility of coercion and exploitation in adult-minor relationships.
I also ran across this bit from an old post of mine (regrettably, in a previous incarnation of this blog; no links are available, but I did quote A. N. Groth and H. J. Birnbaum, also cited by Burroway above):
"A random sample of 175 males convicted of sexual assault against children was screened with reference to their adult sexual orientation and the sex of their victims. The sample divided fairly evenly into two groups based on whether they were sexually fixated exclusively on children or had regressed from peer relationships. Female children were victimized nearly twice as often as male children. All regressed offenders, whether their victims were male or female children, were heterosexual in their adult orientation. There were no examples of regression to child victims among peer-oriented, homosexual males. The possibility emerges that homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia may be mutually exclusive and that the adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater risk to the underage child than does the adult homosexual male." (Emphasis added.)
Other studies have pretty much confirmed this conclusion. Overall, the percentage of child molesters who are adult gay men seems to be no more than 3%. (This is borne out not only by scientific studies, but by the FBI's figures, as well.)
Another note from that early post: most of the "numerous studies" cited by anti-gays as supporting their outrageous claims are the result of the fevered imagination of Paul Cameron, who is a well-known laughingstock in scientific circles, having been kicked out of or censured by every professional organization to which he claimed membership. He now publishes in his own "peer-reviewed" journal. The peer is his equally whacked-out son.
I'm addressing this issue again because the scare mantra is still being used, although it's now laregely become code. That's what forms the core of the attacks on Kevin Jennings, including the letter from 53 Republican House members, and the concern about "education" in the most recent anti-marriage ads in Maine, not to mention the Catholic hierarchy's repeated attempts to deflect criticism of its handling of its own moral lapses.
I may come back to this later, but I have a very full day, and I figure this is enough to get you started.
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