Question: What do you get when you refuse to admit homosexuals to the clergy?

Answer: A lot of empty seminaries.

The Vatican even wants to ban the celibate homosexuals now. We can't even figure out what appreciable difference there is between a celibate homosexual and a celibate heterosexual. A keen fashion sense? Priests wear vestments, so that shouldn't matter. Perhaps they're worried that the homosexual priests would play show tunes in place of the hymns? Hey, that could only liven up an otherwise dull experience, if you ask us.

But seriously, folks, the narrow-minded and misinformed Vatican officials don't seem to realize that it's more likely to be the mandatory celibacy than the latent homosexuality that pushes their priests to molest kids. These poor guys become, to use the vernacular, "prison gay," and since young boys are the people with whom these priests spend most of their time, said young boys are more likely to be the recipients of said priests' advances.

And let's not forget that there don't seem to be any valid studies suggesting a statistical correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Poor Roman Catholic Church. Even with probably the most lapsed Christians in the world (or at least in the United States) among their followers, they just don't seem able to catch up to the Twenty-First Century.

Catch up to the 21st century?

It was only in the 1990s that the Catholic Church admitted that, yes, that whole Inquisition thing might have been a bad idea.

The RCC has lost nearly all credibility among its own people on sexuality issues. Finding themselves deep in a hole after the pedophilia epidemic, the church hierarchy, for some inscrutable reason, has issued the order: "Dig faster! Dig faster!"

Many studies show that homosexuals represent only about 1 to 3% of the population, but let's assume that it is 10%, as the gay community would have us believe. If we assume that gay men are just as likely as heterosexuals to be child molesters, then we might expect about 10% of the victims to be boys. But 81% of the victims are boys....
In college, I heard a Marketing professor explain the 80/20 rule as it pertains to beer consumption in the US: 20% of the population will be responsible for consuming 80% of the beer, and vice versa. This "theory" essentially states that 2 out of 10 people in the US really love the froth and bubbles while 8 out of 10 just like it now and then.

That said, I personally don't believe that Catholic priests become "prison gay" due to celibacy. If 10% of the population is homosexual or at least have homosexual tendencies, then that makes 10% of all Catholic priests gay. I, however, think that percentage is higher among the population of Catholic priests for various reasons. The biggest reason being that Catholics are raised believing homosexuality is evil. In my opinion, a larger number of the gay Catholic males would pursue a life in the church to hide from the sexual tendencies they have been taught is wrong and to protect their faith..... somehow it just doesn't work out for the best when little Timmy shows up for confession looking way too hot in his Toughskin jeans. Going back to the 80/20 rule, I think that this 81% is being molested by a much smaller percentage.... perhaps closer to 20% of all Catholic priests?

***footnote: The percentages I "quoted" were found searching the web in haste and I don't stand behind them as absolute fact. The aforementioned rant is 100% my opinion and I have no problem admitting that I looked for statistics to support my opinion. That makes me liberal media for a day! The bottom line to all of this is that molesting young boys is wrong, whether you are gay, straight or female and adults know the difference. These crimes occur when people show no self control.

It is true that an unknown and probably unknowable number of Catholic men enter the priesthood due to some level of sincere desire, but also due to internal conflicts brought on by their sexual orientation, their gayness, with the thought that the conflict may be resolved by making a commitment to an enforced celibate lifestyle -the priesthood.

The question requiring research is whether Catholic men suffering internal conflict of a different sort -sexual attraction to little boys -would also seek to resolve the conflict by entering a celibate commitment via the priesthood.

Aberrant crimes such as the sexual abuse of children successfully occur at two extremes within a social structure such as the Catholic Church and its smaller dioceses and parishes.

One extreme is out of rarity, a single priest abusing children, doing his utmost to cover up each episode of abuse, choosing victims carefully for the controllability of that victim. The crime goes undetected and unpunished because there is only one offender and his crimes are rarely if ever discovered.

The other extreme is when a church, parish, or diocese has too many pedophile priests -and they are able to cover for each other and prolong the abuse until it is ubiquitous within the system.

The same sort of two extremes thing happens with other sorts of crimes within closed social systems, such as corruption within a police department.

At the extreme seen within the Catholic Church -priests covering for each other, actually abetting each other -you see the wisdom of sayings such as 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'.

A system (Catholic Church) that attracts men with internal conflicts concerning sexuality, whether conflicts of simple orientation or of actual pathological pedophilia, who wrongly believe that the celibacy expectation will negate the conflict become doubly conflicted when they break the celibacy commitment.

This means the Catholic Church may have a prevalency of pedophile males much higher than the surrounding population, that their entry the priesthood was meant to nullify their internal conflict over their pedophiliacal impulses (via celibacy), that they become doubly conflicted and guilty when it doesn't work, that the Church itself does little to police them when identified internally and just moves them around until caught again...... all of this points to a pretty sick organization, a true menace to society in every sense of the word.

Does anyone doubt the number of unreported sex abuse cases in this church are not many times higher than those we actually know about?

The Catholic church is in serious decline everywhere except Africa. And even there it is an altogther different form of itself.

Let's all keep in mind that we are talking about the Roman Catholic Church. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the Romans known for "buggery?" Back in the day, a well-to-do Roman Catholic males took pride in laying with both men and women.
I was raised Methodist, but after surviving Cincinnati public schools, I went to a prominent Cincinnati Catholic high school, strictly to play football. Ironically, the religion classes they forced on us pushed me away from religion altogether. My religion teacher was also the wrestling coach and gym teacher. He had me suspended for a week when I made a "joke" in gym class. He was demonstrating wrestling moves on members of the class. He demonstrated two moves and had the class yell out what moves they were. The first move was the half nelson and the second move was the full nelson. The next move looked like he was mounting the kid from behind, so I screamed out "that's the Father Nelson!" Yep, buggery. That's what the Catholics are all about....

'If we assume that gay men are just as likely as heterosexuals to be child molesters, then we might expect about 10% of the victims to be boys. But 81% of the victims are boys....'

Unless the desire to molest small boys is completely unrelated to the sexual desires of homosexuals, which would make such an assumption unwarranted.

Speaking of unrelated causes, IIRC there isn't a notably higher degree of paedophilic abuse among Catholic priests than amongst the preachers of most other religions, so we can't blame celibacy for the scandals happening. What typified the scandals; what made them so awful, was not the number of paedophiles in Catholic ranks, but the occasionally extremely extensive and systematic nature of their cover ups, the reluctancy of the Church, even now, to reveal the full nature of its horrors to the law of man, and the expansive nature of the scandals (something Mr Santorum would like us to forget when he tries to blame the liberalism of Boston.) Large cover ups of the horrendous sexual (and other) abuse of minors are known to have happened in Canada, Austria, Ireland, as well as the States; even with the limited knowledge we have now we know that entire Orders and Archbishops were involved in protecting child molesters from justice or Hell, just legitimate, scientific, psychiatric help. Christ, in several of the scandals known to have happened in America and Ireland, known child molesters were perpetually kept in a position of trust around unsupervised kids.

The true nature of the scandal strikes me as far more horrifying than celibacy turning Catholic priests 'prison gay'.

-Schmitt.

As much as I hate to double post I'd also like to add that I'm a long time reader and admirer of the two percent company. Your articles about the ten commandments (and how 'the little things' matter,) in particular were ridiculously well reasoned, and I adore the sheer diversity of topics you chaps manage to cover. Rocking stuff.

One thing's always puzzled me though: where does the blog's name come from?

-Schmitt.

Just to clarify a point, we didn't mean to imply that celibacy was actually turning priests into homosexuals by our statement — we used the term "prison gay" as a metaphor (and in jest) to say that celibacy is more likely than homosexuality to be playing a role in triggering this problem. We don't see either of these factors as the root cause, though.

We don't believe for a moment that the priests who molested children were all (or even mostly) homosexuals, or that they were even expressing homosexual tendencies. Homosexuality is about sexual and emotional attraction. Child molestation — like any form of rape — has less to do with sexual attraction and more to do with power and violence.

Also, while we believe that celibacy could certainly be one of the factors that could help to trigger instances of molestation, we do not view celibacy as the root cause. In point of fact, blaming celibacy for these terrible acts would be the same thing as blaming a violent video game for a murderous rampage perpetrated by a fan. To us, it is far more likely that, as some of you have said in these comments, the priesthood attracts more of these troubled people (we're referring to child molesters, regardless of sexual orientation) than other professions precisely because the church teaches that people should "turn to God" in times of temptation — and what better way to do so than to don the frock and devote your life to Jesus? Of course, this is also mere speculation — we are unaware of any studies showing this to be true, and we doubt such a study would be easy to carry out, given the taboo and/or illicit nature of the intended respondents' behavior.

At the end of the day, we completely agree that the systemic cover-ups perpetrated by the church are the most shocking and terrible part of this problem. After all, some people do terrible things — priests haven't cornered the market on child molestation. But when the church hides these offenses and leaves the offenders in positions in which they can continue to molest children, we must come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church places its own interests far above those of its followers.

Obviously, we don't care much for religion in general, but it seems to us that a religion whose values are so skewed can't be good for anybody.

Schmitt: No worries on the double post. After all, if the loon contingent of our readership has no compunction about double (and triple, and quadruple...) posting just to make their moronic points, you are certainly free to do so in order to pay us a compliment! Thanks for reading — it's always good to find more folks out there who are interested in logic and critical thinking.

As far as our name, the story isn't nearly as interesting as we'd like it to be. We cover it in our FAQ, but in short, it's basically a rather silly inside joke.

Hi

Fan Man: "If we assume that gay men are just as likely as heterosexuals to be child molesters, then we might expect about 10% of the victims to be boys. But 81% of the victims are boys."

I assume you mean child sex abuse victims within the catholic church? Cos if you mean generally, I'm afraid you're wrong. Paedophilia (that's how we spell it here in the uk) oftentimes has little to do with gender, and more to do with the abuse. Often abusers will molest both boys and girls.

So, gay abuser = gay victim and straight abuser = straight victim is just plain wrong.

In fact, girls are much more likely to be victims of child sex abuse than boys, at least in terms of convictions. This is statistically the case (just google it), but i can also say, after several years of witnessing child sex abuse cases in the courts, that this is anecdotally the case as well, at least in my experience.

The vast majority of child abusers are men, and the vast majority are relatives. Fathers, brothers, uncles. One case I encountered was of a great-grandfather.

The next biggest group are people in positions of authority. Priests would fall into this category. Within the catholic church, would-be abusers who are priests have a lot more access to male victims than female victims through the altar boy system. As such, one would expect there to be many more male victims of clergy abuse than female.

To emphasise, paedophilia and adult sexual orientation are not necessarily connected.

Smickers, maybe I AM wrong..... BUT I just don't remember the media making a big deal about young girls being molested by Catholic priests. Plenty about young boys, just not young girls. Maybe you could post a link to the contrary? My initial rant was clearly marked as 100% my opinion. I THINK a majority of the priests involved in molestation are gay-----openly or repressed. My opinion. I believe this for the following reason: Experts say that rape isn't about sex, but rather control and other power "issues." With that said, why don't a majority of men committing rape choose an equal amount of male victims? Some do, a MAJORITY don't..... unless men/boys are their preference. I can't stress enough that this is my opinion. I don't have anything against homosexuals..... unless they molest. Same goes for straight people. To each his own, just leave innocent people alone.

I'd apologize for the double post, but I don't think most people care about this old rant any longer... Smickers ascerted that my opinion was wrong, so I took that comment to task and found the following research articles to support my opinion....

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS02E3

http://www.inoohr.org/homosexualstatistics.htm

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=13210

Ouch. We think you're an okay guy, Fan-man, so we'll happily give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just aren't familiar with the organizations that you cited; because if you did know about them, you'd know that they're all grade A loons. Seriously. The sites you link to are...

The Family Research Council, which promotes school prayer and abstinence only sex education (our views on these issues are well documented), and renounces stem cell research, abortion, and in vitro fertilization, just to name a few issues. The statistics and "facts" that they cite to further their fanatic Christian agenda are, to say the very least, highly suspect. They also spend a good deal of time vilifying homosexuals — such articles as "DOMA Won't Do It: Why the Constitution Must Be Amended to Save Marriage" and "Homosexuality: The Threat to the Family and the Attack on Marriage" are good examples of their hateful bullshit.

Then there's the International Organization of Heterosexual Rights...and — surprise, surprise! — their site has nothing to do with heterosexual rights. Instead, it's a site dedicated to wielding the bible as a weapon for some good old-fashioned gay-bashing. Check out the site for yourself — they even provide alleged "manifestos" of homosexuals that read like terrorist handbooks, in order to vilify gays. In short, if you hate gay people, then this is the site for you. They provide as much made up information as possible to "justify" your hateful lifestyle.

And finally, our personal vote for Loon Site of the Year for 2005 (and, incidentally, every single year since 1997), WorldNetDaily. They...um...that is...

Hell, we just can't list all the utter bullshit that WorldNetDaily spews. It's too big a job for anyone. For starters, go read their main page on any given day, and see how many of the headlines are more laughably moronic than the tabloids at the grocery store checkout. Or, do a search for them in our Rants, and you'll come across a few choice references. In short, they are the fucking loon kings.

Without exception, these groups are comprised of homophobic bible thumpers whose agenda includes making gay people seem as E-ville™ as possible. And of course, appearing to link homosexuality to pedophilia makes homosexuals seem pretty damned E-ville™. These sites all read like extended Jack Chick comics — just a bunch of highly suspect self-serving facts, and reactionary religious bullshit. As such, we wouldn't trust their research as far as we could spit.

Remember — it's possible (and, in fact, easy) to find data on the internet to back up any claim you might come up with. Consider your sources carefully.

2%:
Thanks for the benefit of the doubt! This one time, I truly deserve it. I stand behind my opinions because that's what I believe. If anyone presents to me any credible evidence to the contrary, it will be read, processed and considered carefully. When I made my first rant/post regarding this subject back on 9/25, my "footnote" at the end said exactly what I meant. I searched the web in haste and found statistics to back up my opinion and that I didn't stand behind them as absolute fact. My last post was just more of the same. To be fair, research opposing my opinion is more of the same too. I know that statistics are just numbers and can be interpreted any number of ways. Further, the way a question is asked and the people being asked influence that data as much as anythingl. I have an extremely open mind, but my opinions aren't formed with the same scientific prowess that your group or frequent readers possess. I'm an educated man, but my background is not science. It's finance and economics-----real boring stuff. Common sense is the fuel that powers my engines, not science. I don't believe everything I hear/read and I question everything. Again, that's why I like your site, but I'll never be able to stand toe to toe with your group, or Grendel for example, on the scientific process. Hell, I checked out Carl Sagan's Cosmos like I said I would but I found it boring. It's just not me.
Right now, I'm convinced that Catholic priests who molest boys are gay or have latent gay tendencies. It's easy to say that people use their positions of authority to reach their victims. That's obvious isn't it? I read about female teachers having sexual relationships with teenaged students and I'm pretty sure it's not the students dropping the pick up lines. Catholic priests that prey on boys are not pedophiles. A pedophile is a 40 year old man searching the internet for a 14 year old girl to have sex with. A pedophile is a 27 year old female teacher screwing her 15 year old male student in the broom closet. A Catholic priest molesting a boy is rape. It's rape if the priest is molesting a girl. "Pedophile" is a term that the Catholic Church would like us to use. The word "pedophile" helps disguise the fact that there are some sick fucks in the Catholic church raping boys. It's the same type of sick man that takes vacations to impoverished Asian countries to have sex with young girls under the age of 12. Those sick men could get young Asian boys if they wanted, but they're not gay, just sick. Gay and sick though, that is a Catholic priest who molests boys. That is my opinion.
Try to convice me otherwise and I promise I'll listen....but if it doesn't make sense to me, I'll disagree. Are we cool?

Fan-man, please don't think you need to be an über-science-geek or high-brow political pundit to offer your opinions here! And, more importantly, know that we absolutely understand that the majority of what you post will be your opinion — no need to point that out. Everything we post is our opinion, and as we've stated elsewhere, it would be a pain to reiterate that fact in every piece we write. The upshot: no worries.

Second: we think we're mostly on the same page. Whatever one chooses to call it, priests molesting children is a fucking problem, if not outright evil in its purest form — let's face it, there are even moments when we, as a culture, condone the taking of a human life; but raping a child? Never okay. Any other factors — mental illness, sexual orientation, and so forth — are, when you get down to it, irrelevant. Rape is, as you seem to agree, about power and violence, not sex. If a child has been abused, any explanation is not an excuse.

As far as we can tell, we only differ on one point: your suggestion that a male molester who chooses male victims must be gay. Here we enter into a realm of opinions by necessity since, as far as we can tell, there are no good statistics on the sexual orientation of priests. Could most of the accused clergymen be homosexual? Perhaps. But as far as we're concerned, that's irrelevant. There is nothing inherent to homosexuality itself that leads to molestation in any form; as you say, there's a difference between "gay" and "sick." What we're getting at is that it is the "sick" part that results in a priest (or anyone else) molesting a child, regardless of sexual orientation, and regardless of the victim's gender. Since rape isn't generally about sexual attraction, a straight priest could very well molest a male victim; and a gay priest could very well molest a female victim — it all depends on who they have access to. Generally, it seems that priests have far more access to males (think altar boys, seminary students, and so on) than to females; that would explain the statistical prevalence of male victims better than any appeal to sexual orientation.

For the record, we weren't challenging your opinions in our previous comment; we were challenging your citations, as they referenced very questionable data from Far Right agenda-driven websites. We just don't see information from those sites as valid support for anyone's opinions, no matter what opinions they may hold.

And in case you're still wondering: we're cool. No worries on that score!

PS---
I enjoyed the link to the flat earth society or whatever the heck it was called. Google.com is indeed the manhole to the world's biggest cesspool. Since I don't know of a way to strain the sewage from a search, I guess I'll have to continue critical thinking (sigh). "Evidence" to support any opinion is out there if you care believe it.
In my work, I get a great number of opportunities to chastise co-workers with the phrase "only God can prove a negative and God don't exist." You might get a chuckle that my secretary now refers to me as Mr. Rushdie. Now he truly is an interesting guy.

Well, Salman — er, Fan-man, it just goes to show that, whenever you think you've plumbed the depths of stupid religious beliefs, there's always someone out there who can lower the bar even further. It also goes to show, once again, that you really can find anything on the internet.

"More thoughts on Blogging Etiquette" from Thought Leadership

Many bloggers are full of it when it comes to blogging etiquette. Let me tell you why... [More]

[Editor's Note: Since charles buchanan 111 felt the need to post a totally off-topic diatribe with the apparent aim of proselytizing about the "good old days" of traditional Christian fundamentalism, we felt the need to enforce our comment policy by moving an off-topic comment to our "special" Rant dedicated to such rubbish. If you like being proselytized, you can find one copy of charles' comment (which he double posted here and on another Rant) in our post entitled Scribbled Above the Urinal.

To charles: Please refrain from posting off-topic nonsense on our site. If you want to spout off about your silly beliefs, go start your own website. If you persist in this behavior, you will be asked to leave (or forcibly made to do so). If, on the other hand, you care to read what we've written and if you'd then like to respond to us in what at least passes for an intelligent manner, we'll be all ears.]