Donohue defends pedophile priests

Well of course he does.

Raw Story, with links and video.

In another coup for the seemingly part-time political pundit Bill Donohue, CNN broadcast on Tuesday a conversation about the Catholic church's thousands of pedophilia scandals that would be awkward to even over-hear in public, let alone broadcast nation-wide.

Objecting to the term "pedophilia" being used to describe the rampant claims of children being sexually abused by priests and nuns, Donohue instead called the acts "homosexuality," later suggesting "that's what gays do."

What Donohue is saying is that the priests who carried out such horrendous offenses against children did not have a psychological fixation on children: they were simply attracted to people of the same sex, and that's just what homosexuals do. His own bar for limiting use of the term "pedophilia," according to his CNN interview, is, "I dunno, 12, 13 years of age?"

Well, there ya go. So you go from being a 'pedophile' to being a 'child molester' when the victim hits puberty. Mox fuckin' nix. They should be in prison.

In this instance, Donohue simply parrots an occasional meme of the rightwing press, no more true in present day America than it was when similar charges were commonly leveled against other minority groups.

The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance take a differing perspective on the definitions, classifying "homosexuals" as individuals who are solely attracted to adults of the same sex. Pedophilia, they note, "is now generally used to describe an adult who sexually abuses children; a child molester. Some pedophiles are attracted to both boys and girls; some are attracted to children of only one gender."

Meaning: it does not matter the gender of the child, sexual abuse by an adult makes the perpetrator into a pedophile in the eyes of society. Mr. Donohue's argument that "homosexuality" is to blame for the Catholic Church's problems would seem to be misplaced.

'Misplaced' is way too kind a word. Donohue needs to be taken out and horsewhipped. Maybe he can find a priest who likes to do that and isn't turned off by his being a nominal adult.