Among the many motives that the Catholic Church of Rome has for scapegoating LGBTers worldwide is that of attempting to distract world attention from the Church’s seemingly endless child rape scandals.
In the United States, nobody fights harder than the Catholic Church against proposed laws to lift the statutes of limitations for prosecution of child rape. And the Republican Party is the Church’s political ally in its war against such proposed legislation.
New York State Senator Thomas Duane, a Democrat, proposed Senate Bill S3333. The proposed legislation seeks to extend “the statute of limitations in criminal and civil actions for certain sex offenses committed against a child less than eighteen years of age.”
A Duane staffer told this reporter: “If you think Cardinal Dolan fights hard against marriage for same-sex couples, you should know that that is nothing, compared to how fiercely Dolan fights against laws designed better to hold child rapists accountable for their crimes.” The staffer added that Republican state legislators — not Democrats — lead the charge against the proposed legislation.
A perfect example of why the statutes of limitations should be lifted comes from California. Though the Los Angeles diocese settled with many of the Church’s child rape victims there for a total of over $660 million — (without any admission of wrongdoing) — attorney Ray Boucher found that the Church subsequently engaged in cover-ups, even allowing known child rapist priests to hide out in rehab centers until the statute of limitations for prosecutions ran out.
The statutes of limitations need to be lifted, additionally because Church officials sometimes engage in attempted intimidation of victims while the victims are still minors.
For example, in August, 2011, Father Jaime Duenas of the Bronx was arrested on charges he had repeatedly molested a 16-year-old girl working in the rectory. After victims’ advocates criticized then Archbishop Dolan for his handling of the matter, Dolan teamed up with Catholic League president Bill Donohue, took to his blog and trashed the 16-year-old girl. Dolan and Donohue were not only attempting to intimidate that victim, but also sending a very public message: “Dare to come forward as a young victim, and you too will be trashed to the public by the most powerful Catholic Church leaders in the country.”
And the Church’s intimidation related to statutes of limitations is not limited to youngsters. As President of the Colorado State Senate, Joan Fitz-Gerald, a Democrat, proposed legislation to lift the statute of limitations on child rape. Fitz-Gerald spoke to the New York Times about the Catholic Church’s war against her proposed legislation: “It was the most brutal thing I’ve ever been through. The politics, the deception, the lack of concern for not only the children in the past, but for children today.â€
At its upper echelons, the National Organization for Marriage is united with the Catholic Church in political strategy. There apparently is no political strategy which NOM has that is not also promoted by the Church. NOM founder and mastermind Robert P. George sits on the advisory board of the Catholic League. Catholic League president Bill Donohue often attempts to scapegoat homosexuals to distract attention from the Church’s child rape scandals. NOM’s Brian Brown appears to abet his NOM boss Robert George and Bill Donohue in those efforts.
For example, very shortly after the 2011 arrest of Father Jaime Duenas, NOM’s Brian Brown attempted to smear gay rights advocates by alleging that gay rights are connected to a (non-existent) push to “normalize pedophilia.” Brown hate-and-fear-mongered against gays by mischaracterizing a medical experts’ symposium session that was aimed at improving treatment for pedophiles. The symposium had less than nothing to do with gay rights. Brown’s reprehensible actions in that anti-gay smear match the apparent Catholic Church political strategy of scapegoating and falsely blaming gays to distract public attention from the Church’s child rape scandals.
In his outlandish and completely unsupported anti-gay smear, NOM’s Brian Brown referenced alleged “Biblical views of marriage.”
In a debate Brown had with Dan Savage, Savage raised the point that the Bible has been used to justify slavery, that such pernicious abuse of the Bible was discontinued, and that people today must discontinue all gay-bashing abuses of the Bible.
In his gay-bashing propaganda produced after the debate, Brown lies about the extent to which the Bible historically was used to justify slavery. Brown actually says that Popes have condemned slavery, as though nobody knew anything about the history of the Catholic Church.
Pope Nicholas V, Pope Callixtus III, Pope Sixtus IV, Pope Leo X and Pope Alexander VI all issued papal “bulls” authorizing the slave trade and sometimes citing Biblical justifications for it.
If it is true that 1) later Popes condemned slavery, then 2) Brian Brown and all of his fellow NOM anti-gay bigots should 3) take that papal movement away from Bible-justified slavery, towards human enlightenment as 4) a model for ending all present-day Bible-based gay bashing.
As explained above, the appearance is that through NOM’s Robert George’s position of authority in the Catholic League — and Robert George’s position of power and influence in the Republican Party — NOM’s despicable tactic of smearing gays as pedophiles is coordinated with the Church’s political strategies.
If the Catholic Church and NOM are not coordinating political strategies against lifting the statutes of limitations for prosecution of child rape, then when will NOM’s Robert George, Brian Brown, Maggie Gallagher and Thomas Peters make public demands that the statutes of limitations be lifted?
New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide†is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.