Friday, July 23, 2010

Are Sexual Mores Based On Love and Truth or Currently Acceptable Trends?

Citing Anthony Stephen-Arroyo column in the Washington Post "On Faith" July 22 article where Dr. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League makes the claim upon all the evidence of the Church sex scandal that the main violators were not merely pedophiles but homosexuals and that homosexuality is the real culprit I have to say to some degree that I agree with him. It seems to me that while homosexuality gets a pass because it is between two consenting adults, pedophilia is a crime because the child is below the age of consent. Yet the question remains whether sexual deviance of any sort can be either eschewed legally or supported. The reality of the matter is that sexuality is a matter of psychological conditioning, people have certain appetites to express positions and traits that they hold within themselves. The pedophile is looking to have complete control and dominance he is as interested in abusing his victims as any torturer. The homosexual is also interested in abusing the person that he is having sex with, that is the trait that ought to be recognized with the homosexual as well. Where there is pride there is bound to be this desire to express triumphalism and superiority beyond the acceptable limit that a person ought to be treated, ultimately it is an absence of love that is the prevailing trait.

Some would say that the crime is the Bishops looking the other way when it came to sexual abuse of minors and that is highly possible. I would offer that none of us would be looking at this issue either if it wasn't for the money that could be dole out to victims, up to one billion dollars now. If the Church was poor and bankrupt, if there was no way for money to be had, a lawyer would not even be hired.

"Roderick MacLeish Jr., a lawyer with the firm that represents nearly half of the alleged victims, said the $85 million offer was accepted after considering the archdiocese's financial condition and the additional stress a trial would put on victims." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96801,00.html


Sexuality has variant moral latitudes amongst us as human beings. Here in the United States and Europe homosexuality is no longer considered a psychiatric or moral problem when in fact it is seen to be so by the Church. In South Africa for instance they have some of the highest rates of child rape in the world (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1680715,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-world). "Many children are brutalized so often that they are desensitized to the abuse being a crime."

Variances on sexual predispositions lead to a variety of moral perceptions regarding sexual behavior and even then what the individual holds is often different than what the state espouses. For instance in India and places like South Africa many men claim to believe that having sex with a minor will cure them of AIDS. The moral implication of this of course being two fold one is that sex with a minor is legitimate given any condition and two ridding oneself of AIDs at the expense of another contracting it is also valid. While in places like Uganda homosexuality is still illegal. In the United States and Europe there used to be sodomy laws on the books as well as laws preventing the manufacturing and dissemination of pornography. Today gay marriage is perceived by some as a civil right and pornography is a billion dollar a year industry.

The payouts from the Church may not be directly related to the crimes, there are undoubtedly those not telling the truth to get to the money that is available as was the case in the 9/11 tragedy, hurricane Katrina disaster and the Toyota recall of 2010. According to the John Jay Report, the responses of the dioceses and religious communities at the time of the allegations were as follows.

As for other crimes, John J. Geoghan who was the defrocked priest at the center of the Boston Archdiocese Church Sex Scandal in the 1990's was killed in prison by Joseph Druce. He was accused of allegedly abusing 130 children. Although he was in protective custody he was strangled and stomped to death, yet the State was not held liable for this. In fact most probably thought he deserved his fate when in fact he had beaten two charges because the statue of limitations had run out and one case was dropped by the plaintiff. The case that he was in jail for was being appealed.

In the end when we live in a world with such outstanding ambiguity when it comes to sexual mores as we do today, it seems strange to a limited degree that pedophilia would be treated excessively different or that we really have the right to "screen out" the less popular sexual activities on a moral basis, presumably because they are not as popular as say homosexuality or seen as indefensible.

NAMBLA(North American Man Boy Love Association) was a member of the International Gay and Lesbian Alliance in 1993 (along with MARTIJN and Project Truth) until forced out by a bill from Senator Jesse Helms which would withhold $119 million dollars in U.N. contributions until President Bill Clinton could certify that "no UN agency grants any official status, accreditation, or recognition to any organization which promotes, condones, or seeks the legalization of pedophilia, that is, the sexual abuse of children". The International Gay and Lesbian Association received U.N. consultative status in 1994. While Gary King of the Human Rights Organization claimed that NAMBLA was not a gay organization and had nothing to do with the homosexual community. NAMBLA responded by saying "man/boy love is by definition homosexual," that "man/boy lovers are part of the gay movement and central to gay history and culture," and that "homosexuals denying that it is 'not gay' to be attracted to adolescent boys are just as ludicrous as heterosexuals saying it's 'not heterosexual' to be attracted to adolescent girls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Man/Boy_Love_Association#The_International_Lesbian_and_Gay_Association_controversy




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