The clinical parsing you engage in about what labels to use regarding child rape appear to me to be an attempt to minimize the inherent cruelty and violence of the crimes. I suggest if you want to be taken seriously, that you acknowledge the gravity of pedophilia – at any age of a minor’s young life.

Lastly, discrimination is up to the private organization, it’s their club, their rules. We’ve all been discriminated against in one way or another. As a practicing Christian, I was turned down as a volunteer for a jewish Big Brother program. Did I stomp and wail and clench my fist at my local jewish community friends? Of course not. I respected their choice to run their BB program in whatever way they saw best for them. Gays need to do the same. Respect our choice to protect our boys, and quit making this discussion about “them”. The organization exists to serve boys. Not the adults!

It has been noted in the coverage of this development that until a lawsuit in 1974, BSA allowed local organizations to decide whether they would be racially segregated or not. Should parents who were morally opposed to racial segregation have pulled their sons from local organizations that were integrated for the reason that it was immoral for the national organization to permit segregation? I suppose it should come as no surprise that an American organization founded in 1911, even a religious one, was for some time racially segregated. But it does come as somewhat of a shock that it took a lawsuit in 1974—six years after Martin Luther King, Jr., died—to end the segregation.

I hope the Scouts (and the SCOTUS) stay strong, and do not bend to flawed thinking.

The BSA would benefit from a thorough evaluation of what occurred in the crisis in the Church before changing it position on homosexuals as scout leaders.

(1.) Fitzgibbons, R & Dale O’Leary Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Clergy The Linacre Quarterly 78(3) (August 2011): 252–273.

You seem to be saying that just because your heart is the right place you can say that 99.9% percent of abusing priests engaged in “homosexual pedophilia,” when the percentage of priests who abused boys was 64%, and a great many of the boys were old enough so that the abuse couldn’t be classified as pedophilia. But there is a difference between 99.9% and 64%—a big difference. And there is a difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia.

Rape is rape.

It’s difficult to disagree with that, but of course offenses ranged everywhere from penetration (in the extreme cases) to inappropriate touching or fondling through clothing. The latter is not rape. It is reprehensible, but it is not rape.

And whether that man is a homosexual for 15 minutes, 15 hours, 15 months, or 15 years is of exactly zero importance to the horror of his crime against a child.

I am not disputing the seriousness of the crimes. I am disputing the idea that a man can be “a homosexual” for 15 minutes.

Facts make a difference, and you got most of yours wrong. Pedophiles, rape, and homosexual have meanings, and if you want to be taken seriously, you don’t use them to mean anything you want them to mean and justify it by claiming to have the right emotional tone.

The John Jay Report was commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and while it may have its deficiencies, it is the most complete source of information on abuse by Catholic priests.

Abuse allegations peaked with priests ordained in the 1970s and has fallen dramatically ever since. The Vatican prohibited the ordination of men with “deep seated homosexual tendencies” in 2005. If the Church realized the problem was “gay priests” only in 2005, why has abuse by priests decreased so dramatically?

Norm,

Is a man who never dreamed of having sex with a man before being in prison, had sex with men in prison, and never dreamed of having sex with men once out of prison a homosexual because he committed homosexual acts in prison. It is simply wrong to claim that committing a homosexual act makes a person a homosexual. I have known several gay men who had sex with women. Does engaging in heterosexual acts make a person heterosexual?

And a man who engages in homosexual pedophilia, as did 99.9% of the (very small percentage of priests) sexual abusing priests, is a homosexual predator.

According to the John Jay Report, 3.6% of accused priests were accused of sexually abusing both boys and girls, 22.6% of abusing girls only, 64% of abusing males only, and for 9.8%, the gender of the accuser was not known to those who compiled the report.

Pedophilia is sex with prepubescent children, with the cutoff age of 13. (Different children begin puberty at different times, so the age is less important than the lack of maturity of the victim.) Of all victims of abuse, 27.3% were ages 15-17 years old. So the term pedophilia is inapplicable with them. Another 50.9% of victims were ages 11-14, so pedophilia applies only to part of those instances.

No gay priests. The trendy US Church let this slide for 40 years, turned a blind eye, and ordained hundreds of predators seeking 3 squares a day, a place to sleep, and lots of innocent victims served up on a platter behind the sacristy.

Over half (55.7%) of accused priests were accused of only one incident. Another 26.9% were accused of 2-3. The percentage with 4-9 accusations was 13.9%, and with 10 or more allegations 3.5%. While even one incident was one too many,…