He's saying most of the victims are post-pubescent boys so it's a gay problem and not a pedophile problem per se. I've never understood it. If it was a gay problem, these guys could go a few towns over and hit up grindr.
That said, a separate issue is that there's apparently a fair amount of gay sex that occurs in seminaries. However, I see that as more of a Church issue than one requiring the attention of secular society.
Um - they’re don’t that, too. And again, pedophilia by definition involves pre-pubescent victims, so your statement above is an inherent contradiction.
I know they're doing that. But priests hitting up a gay club or having consensual sex in the seminary isn't harming children.
And the semantics re. "pedophilia" isn't helpful or honest. When the victims are 12-14, it's clearly an infatuation with something other than "adults," regardless of whether not it fits the clinical definition of "pedophilia."
Semantics would be refusing to acknowledge that sexual activity between two people of the same sex is by definition homosexual.
Show me where I said otherwise.
And my point is that if you take issue with me labeling them "pedophiles," i'm happy to concede that and refer to them by the more palatable term "child molesters" or "sexual abusers of minors," or any other term that notes that taboo nature of the engagement. The point is that these people are engaging in sexual crimes against minors.
It's crazy to me that you could see an adult male inappropriately touching a minor male and think the issue is as superficial as the adult being gay, rather than some deeper proclivity that attracts him to 14 year olds.
If a male teacher inappropriately touches his 13 year old female student, nobody thinks "these damn hetero teachers..." They think "hm...people who are sexually attracted to junior high students shouldn't be junior high teachers."
Ok, it sounds like you've misunderstood my position. I've never said that gay men are more likely to be sexual abusers at large. But when you look at the pattern of sexual abuse in the Church, you cannot ignore the fact that most of the abuse is homosexual in nature. That is a fact. End stop.
The question then is,
why? Coincidence? I don't think you believe that, and I don't either. I tend to subscribe to Andrew Sullivan's (and other notable Catholics, gays, and others) belief that gay men who are attracted to the Church as a cover for their "sin" are perhaps susceptible to a host of disorders, including abusing their power for repressed sexual gratification.
This isn't about trying to blame homosexuality, or about linking homosexuality to sexual abuse. If you are trying to solve a problem, you first need to try to identify the causes. And to ignore the strong correlation between sexual abuse and homosexuality in the Church, you are deliberately blinding yourself to all the available data in the name of political correctness.
