Shame on you, Nightline

[novapsyche]

Their "expose" on the Catholic church molestation crisis had them quote a section from the commission's findings, which conflates a rise in "homosexual" priests entering the priesthood in the 1950s with the abuse of 10,700 children.

The people in charge of the media know the power of the media. To quote that paragraph at length without balancing the statement with the fact that pedophilia and homosexuality have nothing to do with each other is extraordinarily irresponsible of ABC.

Comments

[lordofgaysantas.livejournal.com]

Diastrously so as well.
Whenever people make that insinuation, all I can think about is the myriad heterosexual adults that were molesting kids I knew while I was grewing up. I only know of a few kids that were molested by homosexuals.

[inhumandecency.livejournal.com]

Well, that's not any good either. There are fewer gay adults, so even if they abused kids more frequently, there would still be more kids abused by heterosexuals on the whole. Heterosexual adults are also more likely to have unimpeded, socially-protected access to kids (i.e., offspring) than homosexuals are. I accept on logical grounds that homosexual people are no more likely to abuse children, for two reasons:

1) rates of child abuse are stratospherically higher among step-parents, and since homosexuals are less liklely to get married, they're not contributing to that statistic.
[pauses to note that the vast majority of step-parents don't abuse their stepchildren either]

2) I'm not aware of any evidence that homosexual people are more likely to lack the basic human decency that would prevent one from sexually molesting a child.

However, in terms of hard empirical proof this is going to be a really tough question to answer definitively.

[lordofgaysantas.livejournal.com]

I never said homosexuals are less inclined to molest children - my point was that far more heterosexuals molest children than people realize. And since there are less homosexuals, it's especially ridiculous for people to single homosexuals out as the ultimate fear.

As I said: I do know kids that were molested by homosexuals, but it's nowhere near the amount of those that I know that were molested of heterosexuals. See? That doesn't say that homosexuals are less inclined, and completely fits with there being a smaller number of homosexuals amongst the population. Pedophilia and molestation comes in all shapes and sizes, so it's idiotic to set a profile for this based on sexual orientation, age, race.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Well, one of the people the anchor interviewed was a college professor, and he took pains to say that pedophilia is a disease, whereas homosexuality is a sexual orientation. He said to correlate them would be beyond what the report actually found.

Still, the insinuation is certainly there (as far as the church's findings are concerned). It's extraordinarily bothersome, with the current societal goings-on.