Lists of Priests Accused of Sexual Abuse Are Spilling Out Across the Country

In a prior post I noted how organized religion has been the worse purveyor of anti-LGBT abuse and hatred for centuries.  No part of organized religion has done more to make life a living hell for LGBT people than the Roman Catholic Church which still labels gays as "inherently disordered" and "inclined towards evil" even as the Church is being increasingly shown to be full of predator clergy and defined by rank hypocrisy.  Rather than admit that the Church's rampant sex abuse problem stems from its warped dogma on sex and sexuality and the Church's quest for power and control over others, Pope Francis is joining the chorus that blames the enter problem on gays within the ranks of the clergy.  This lame and disingenuous scapegoating ignores the cover ups and all too often aiding and abetting of predator priests throughout bishoprics literally all across the globe.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the lists (which are said by many to be woefully incomplete) of predatory priests being belatedly released by some bishops as they seek to stem the hemorrhaging of parishioners who are finally walking away in disgust. As the piece notes, it will likely take federal and state prosecutors to ever secure a full accounting of the true numbers of child rapists and molesters the Church has sheltered.  Here are article highlights (the piece begins by referencing a list released by the Diocese of Syracuse where I was raised through high school): 

It was a list Charles L. Bailey Jr. had wanted to see for years: the names of the priests in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse. . . . on Dec. 3, Mr. Bailey got a call from a local reporter. It was up, on the diocesan website. Fifty-seven priests. None were still in ministry and most were deceased, including, there on Page 4, the priest who had repeatedly raped Mr. Bailey when he was not yet a teenager.

As the Catholic Church faces a wave of federal and state attorney general investigations into its handling of sex abuse, bishops around the country have struggled with how to react. Some have locked down defensively. Others are waiting on guidance from the Vatican, which instructed American bishops last month to wait on taking any collective action until the new year.

But dozens of bishops have decided to take action by releasing lists of the priests in their dioceses who were credibly accused of abuse. And they are being released at an unprecedented pace.

The disclosures have trickled out week by week — 10 names in Gaylord, Mich.; 28 in Las Cruces, N.M.; 28 in Ogdensburg, N.Y.; 15 in Atlanta; 34 in San Bernardino, Calif., among many others. All 15 dioceses in Texas have agreed to release lists. Last week, the leaders of two major Jesuit provinces, covering nearly half of the states, released the names of more than 150 members of the order “with credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor.”

Many of the priests named on the lists are dead, but not all. Many had already been known as abusers, but scores of names are new, even to activists who have been closely following the church abuse scandals for years. Among the known allegations, many of the cases date back generations.

Some victims, as they comb through the lists, say there are names missing. Others see reason for distrust in the fact that the church had names to release at all, nearly two decades after claiming the sexual abuse scandals introduced a new era of transparency.

The lists are coming in the wake of an explosive grand jury report released in August by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office, detailing at grim length the abuse of over 1,000 people by hundreds of priests. Investigations have followed in more than a dozen states.

The scope of the federal investigation remains unclear. Last month, William M. McSwain, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sent a request to every Roman Catholic diocese in the United States not to destroy documents related to the handling of child sexual abuse.

Still, if releasing the lists was meant to defuse the anger of the church’s critics, there is little evidence it has done that.

In Syracuse, Mr. Bailey said that he had already received calls from victims who said their abusers were not on the list. The name of the priest who had raped Mr. Bailey was listed in a section for clergy who “were deceased at the time of the reporting of the allegation,” a claim he said was contradicted by some of the priest’s abuse victims.Among a laity distrustful of the church’s handling of sex abuse, there is a widespread sentiment that the only way to get the truth is through the subpoena power of law enforcement.

“The civil court system, that’s the new way the Holy Spirit moves,” said Patrick Wall, a former priest and canon lawyer who now works on behalf of abuse victims.

Advocacy groups suggest that bishops could invite the authorities to pore through all of a diocese’s files. Or the authorities could come in uninvited, as was the case when dozens of federal and local agents conducted a surprise search of the offices of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston last month.

The mistrust underlying all this was earned, Bishop Coyne said. The bishops had proven over the last two decades that they had not been able to police themselves. But given the current atmosphere, self-policing might not be an option any more.

“Now I have a reason,” Bishop Coyne said of pushing for the publication of a list. “The list is going to get published anyway.”

Given the complete moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy, I remain amazed how otherwise decent people can remain a part of and continue to fund what might well be called a criminal enterprise, especially now that the third highest official at the Vatican has been convicted of child molestation. 

"Conservative" Catholics Are Seeking Dirt on Cardinals

The culture wars that have rocked American society as Christofascists and white supremacists have sought to return the nation to the 1950's in a rebellion against modernity are also enveloping the Roman Catholic Church.  The "conservatives" within the Church likewise want to go back to the 1950's and reimpose a Church that predates Vatican II.  To achieve this agenda, they want to be rid of Pope Francis and are now looking for "dirt" on American cardinals who they seek to blame for the Church's continued sex abuse scandals.  The irony, of course, is that many of the members of the hierarchy that fostered the sex abuse scandal in the 1950's, 1960's and into the 1970's were old fashion "conservatives"  who rose to power prior to Vatican II.  The second irony is that the very adherence to bizarre dogma on sexuality (and the resultant psycho-sexual dysfunction of so many priests) which these conservatives want to reimpose played a huge role in setting the stage for the sex abuse scandals in the first place.  Indeed, rampant homophobia deeply motivates these "conservative" Catholics.  A piece in Slate looks at this right wing Catholic effort which, if successful, would likely trigger an even larger exodus from the Church on the part of Millennials and thinking Catholics.  Here are article highlights:

The culture war brewing within the American Catholic Church is about to get uglier.

A group of wealthy American Roman Catholics have banded together to fund what they describe as a public investigation into every member of the church’s College of Cardinals. As the Catholic news site Crux reported on Monday, the group has assembled almost 100 academics, investigators, journalists, and former FBI agents to produce what it’s calling the “Red Hat Report.” The watchdog group plans to spend more than $1 million in its first year, with the goal of naming “those credibly accused in scandal, abuse, or cover-ups” and influencing the selection of the next pope.

The group is responding to an obvious crisis: The Catholic Church is in the throes of multiple overlapping clerical abuse scandals, including the resignation in disgrace of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick this summer. Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania grand jury found that more than 300 priests in the state had abused more than 1,000 children over the course of decades. By mid-September, eight other states had announced similar investigations. (That’s to say nothing of recent church scandals in other countries, including Chile and Germany.) And the Vatican, including the institution under Pope Francis, has been accused of ignoring or even covering up the rot.

The goal of the new Better Church Governance group, as Crux’s story makes clear, is to influence the selection of the next pope, who will be chosen by a subset of current cardinals.

An independent investigation might sound like a straightforwardly encouraging development. What could be wrong with an attempt by outraged lay Catholics to shed sunlight on an ongoing scandal that the church hierarchy has utterly failed to confront? The trouble is that the church’s abuse scandals have become a proxy in a much larger ecclesiastical battle. The wealthy Americans behind Better Church Governance are crusading not just against Pope Francis’ leadership, but against cardinals with insufficient theological adherence to “traditional values”—and particularly against homosexuality in the church.

The new group is sponsored by the Center for Evangelical Catholicism, and its leaders have affiliations with a wide array of conservative institutions, including Hillsdale College and Crisis magazine. Many conservative critics of Pope Francis view the current abuse crisis as springing from a “homosexual subculture” in the church . . . . (A 2011 report found that gay priests were no more likely to abuse minors than straight priests; a rise in gay priests in the 1970s and 1980s was actually associated with a decrease in abuse.)

An attendee at the organization’s Sunday launch event in Washington asked if the report would include information about the cardinals’ sexuality. The report will follow the church’s moral law, Imam answered: “If there is a rumor of him being homosexual, it will be noted very carefully … but we need to be sure.” The Red Hat Report will also note whether each cardinal’s known views align with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith . . .

Francis’s defenders and other non-conservatives in the church are wary of the new group’s motives. “At least they’re transparent about their hate,” tweeted the Rev. James Martin, an influential Jesuit priest who has criticized the church’s approach to homosexuality. “As in many far-right Catholic circles, simply being gay = being ‘corrupt.’ ” Another prominent priest and theologian called the group “self-appointed vigilante ideologues.”

The conservative Pope Benedict XVI was accused of covering it up, and now similar allegations have been weaponized by the former pope’s political allies against his replacement. The stench is so ubiquitous, touching church authorities in every era, from every jurisdiction, of every theological bent, that it can always be found wafting from the other side, no matter which side you’re on.

The Red Hat Report may end up doing much-needed work to investigate and illuminate sexual corruption. Along the way, it could splinter the American church along already-fragile ideological fault lines, and introduce the smear tactics of a political campaign to the selection of the next pope.

"It’s a Gay Problem," and Other Myths From the Catholic Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis

One of the continuing myths put out by right wing elements in the Roman Catholic Church - and which is happily further disseminated by Protestant Christofascists and the right wing media - is that gays in the Catholic priesthood is the reason for the Church's continued sex abuse crisis.  Pushing this myth is far preferable than facing up to the real causes: (i) the Church's bizarre 12th century views on human sexuality and a belief that all sex is essentially dirty and sinful, (ii) the stunted psycho-sexual development of priests brought up in the Church's all male seminary high schools and seminaries, and (iii) the Church hierarchy's preference to protect priests and avoid any exposure of clerical wrongdoing no matter who has to be sacrificed in the process.  A piece in Religious Dispatches at Rewire looks at the these true causes of the once again exploding sex abuse crisis.  Here are highlights that address certain myths put out by right wing elements:

Americans love intrigue. So when Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano recently issued a public letter alleging a wide-scale cover-up of child sexual abuse—one which reaches all the way to Pope Francis himself—the media and public were sucked right into the conspiracy.

Vigano’s letter opened the doors to the inner workings of the Vatican political and culture war—one culminating with accusations of liberal vs. conservative, gay vs. straight priests, and the power struggles between Popes Francis, Pope Emeritus Benedict, and the Roman Curia.

The problem? None of this has to do with the causes of the sexual abuse of children. By muddying the waters and shifting focus from the crimes and onto politics and the Vatican culture war, Vigano’s letter feeds into old stereotypes that silence victims, minimize abuse, and encourage the continued cover-up.

If we want to address the scope and scale of the problem and put an end to the crisis and those who enable it, we must first work to dispel the myths and stereotypes that aim to silence victims and normalize criminal sexual behavior.

A problem of “homosexual priests”

This is a complicated issue, though it’s not a murky one. It’s important to begin by noting that, according to experts, there is absolutely zero evidence that sexual orientation has anything to do with sexual abuse. Period. In fact, when it comes to adult men who sexually abuse boys, researchers have found that it doesn’t even make sense to label these men as “homosexual,” since they neither possess an adult sexual orientation nor do they tend to show a preference for gender.

When apologists cite “the gay problem” for the ongoing crisis—what Bishop Robert Molino recently called the “homosexual subculture”—their intention is to paint a picture of secretive and “deviant” groups of clergy and a wider Church culture that tolerates them. In reality, the allegedly disproportionately large number of gay priests may be related to the problem, but it isn’t the cause of it.

As Robert Mickens wrote in July, and as others have noted for years, the pathologizing of queer sexualities has driven many men to the priesthood, as the vow of celibacy offers what appears to be a safe haven from negotiating a forbidden path. As a result, although he’s careful to point out that there is nothing about gay men in healthy situations that makes them more apt to sexually abuse others, Mickens argues that some of the abuse is due to the “homophobia that keeps gay men in the closet, bars them from growing up and results in distorted sexuality for many gay priests.”

In other words, the “homosexual subculture” isn’t the problem, though the demonization of queer sexualities could certainly contribute to the failure to develop a healthy adult sexuality.

Ask any victim of clergy sexual abuse—male or female—and they will tell you: child sexual abuse has no place in healthy adult sexuality, gay or straight. When apologists call the crisis a “gay problem,” they succeed in both silencing women victims and forcing a sexual identity onto male victims against their will.

Want the easiest way to silence and shame a male (straight or gay) victim of child rape and sanitize the crime? Call the crime “gay sex.” Make him question whether the abuse was an actual crime at all.

Child sex abuse is a crime of violence where those in positions of power prey upon the weak and vulnerable, using sex as a weapon. Apologists for the Catholic Church will do anything to make sure that this isn’t the focus.

“It happens everywhere”

Yes, child sexual abuse is a global problem, inside and outside of the Catholic Church. It happens in homes, schools, camps, sports programs, and any organization that caters to children or helps the vulnerable.

Apologists for the Catholic Church want you to believe that it is “just like any other institution.” It’s not.

Nowhere else in modern society have we seen the continued collusion to cover up decades of sex crimes on the macro or micro level as we see in the Catholic Church. They’ve spent billions of dollars lobbying against victim-friendly legislation; settling with victims; paying defense lawyers to shield abusers and their enablers; hiding and obfuscating evidence of child sexual abuse; shaming and silencing victims; and otherwise deceiving Catholics and the public about the crimes.

Add to that the fact that the church is supposed to have moral authority, and this is a crisis of monstrous proportions.

“It’s a problem of celibacy”

Celibacy is the vow requiring that priests abstain from marriage and adult sexual relations.

Is this suppression of adult sexuality healthy? That’s up for debate. In fact, former priest, psychotherapist and expert on priestly celibacy A.W. Richard Sipe concluded after years of research that no more than 50 percent of priests are celibate at any given time.

“It’s not really pedophilia”

Labeling victims because of their physical development minimizes and normalizes sexual assault.

Victims of “pedophilia” (children victimized pre-puberty), church defenders say, are different from victims of “ephebophilia,” those abused after puberty but before adulthood. Older victims are considered “less catastrophically damaged” by the church, implying that what happened to them was less abhorrent and caused less pain.

But let’s get down to the truth: Whether a 15-year-old or an 8-year-old is sexually abused, they are both victims of a horrific crime.

Sanitizing the crime and minimizing victims by saying their abuse “wasn’t as bad” because one particular victim is more physically developed than another—even though two victims may be the exact same age and emotional maturity—is reprehensible.

“The church and Pope Francis are too liberal”

A victim of child sexual abuse has no political leanings. Nor does a predator. Predators seek “easy targets”: at risk children who may lack family structure, self-esteem, or have other disadvantages that a predator can exploit.

Child sexual abuse and cover-up flourished in the Catholic Church during conservative papacies, just as it is continuing now. I’ve worked with victims pre-and post-Vatican II and their stories are similar.

The cover-up has nothing to do with politics. It’s about saving face, protecting priestly friends, and saving the Church from scandal. The political leanings of the pope or the predator have nothing to do with it. As John Gehring recently noted on Religion and Politics, “a top official from the Vatican’s secretary of state office acknowledged receiving allegations about [former Archbishop] McCarrick’s behavior with seminarians as far back as 2000, during the papacy of John Paul II.”

The only way we will be able to expose predators and those who covered for them is to maintain razor-sharp focus on the victims and to stop the crimes, not propagate myths that enable more abuse. It is the victims who empowered the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. And those same victims are the ones who have refused to give up the fight for justice, in spite of insurmountable odds.

In just the past week the attorneys general from at least a half dozen states have vowed to investigate the Church, and, according to the New York Times, “Pope Francis has summoned bishops from around the world to Rome for an unprecedented meeting focused on protecting minors.” 

It’s a good start. In addition, despite the cries of apologists, we must continue to demand robust laws that expose predators and hold the Church accountable for the cover-up and encourage law enforcement to do everything possible to ensure that this cycle of abuse is completely eradicated and wrongdoers punished.

Don’t Blame the Catholic Church Sex Abuse Crisis on Gays

Photo by Chris Karidis on Unsplash.

Many on the far right of the Roman Catholic Church ranging from reactionary bishops and cardinals and, in my view, parasitic, self-enrichment organizations such as Church Militant and Bill Donohue's Catholic League (which is comprised of one well paid Donohue and one staffer) are working overtime to blame the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal on gays - specifically, gay priests - rather than the Church's clericalism, the Church's bizarre 12th century dogma on sexuality, or the Church hierarchy's active cover ups of abuse.  As always, scapegoating gays and shielding the reputation of the Church is the prime goal regardless of the lies and subterfuge required.   In response, a piece in America, the official outlet of the Jesuits - historically the best educated and most zealous defenders of Catholicism - argues that this scapegoating effort is wrong and not to be believed.  Indeed, gay Catholics, perhaps more than any others, have had to truly ponder the Gospel message and what - if one believes them to be more than myths of ignorant herders - the Old Testament seeks to tell.  Because of this, psycho-sexually mature gays have much to teach the Church. Here are excerpts:

This is not a fun moment to be Catholic, I know, and we are all grasping for sense and answers. But here’s the thing: Using an abuse and accountability scandal to scapegoat Catholic queerness is not O.K.

Take, for example, this letter from Bishop Robert Morlino. I trust the bishop has the best intentions, but some of his most scorching indignation aims not at the abuses of power and accountability he is supposed to be talking about but at homosexuality, in general, which he reminds us the church regards as “intrinsically disordered” and that “cries out to heaven for vengeance” and possibly—the referent is not fully clear—is to be “hated with a perfect hatred.”

There are other concurrent truths, too. . . . . Each time I read something like this, I think of how, over and over, the people who have saved my faith when it was on the brink happened to be queer folks. I suspect this is not an accident. I cannot be sure, but I expect it was their experience of marginalization and their humanness against it that helped me see where God is.

Some of these people have been of the left, some of the right. Some have been on TV, some will never be so seen. Sometimes things have even gotten inappropriate. But that was not because they were queer. Straight folks in the church cross boundaries, too, just as much.

I came into this church right in the heat of the Boston Globe revelations. I was baptized in 2003. Many times I have been grateful to have been called to this church as an adult (barely, I was 18). But I was old enough to know the difference between the nonsense and the glory.

I would not have begun to know God were it not for a person, harbored in holy orders, whose life could only be described as queer, and who drew me in, safely and respectfully, when the straight dudes wanted to drive me out.

I never noticed queerness in one of the people I looked to early in my Christian life as a guide and model. But years later I ran into him with his partner at a famously welcoming evening Mass, on the other end of town from where he lived.

And it was from some corners of this church, believe it or not, that queer experiences seemed to make the most sense. From one corner, a nun had to keep her ministry to the trans community secret. From another, the sweetest friendship I have ever seen was between a famous, withering Jesuit and a woman whose husband, while dying from AIDS, the two of them had tended to decades earlier.

In a sense, there is some truth that the problem of abuse has to do with a problem of queer sexuality. It is the problem of a repressed, denialist, immature queerness that discovered itself a little after Vatican II but was not able to go beyond that.

There is a revelation at hand here. It is not a liberal revelation or a conservative one. It is something else, something ancient. Blindness to it has caused so, so much pain. It has caused good people and good leaders to be their worst selves.

As I traveled my coming out journey, I read a great deal on religion, the Bible and Catholicism and worked with a licensed therapist who was an ordained minister. In the process, I suspect I gave more thought and analysis to my faith than the average Catholic and many members of the Church hierarchy who seem most focused on power, status, control of others and living like "princes."

Clericalism and a Derelict Hierarchy Fuel Catholic Church Sex Abuse

Accused sexual predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Even as far right Catholic sites such as Church Militant - ironically edited by a self-loathing closet gay man - continue to blame the Church's seemingly never ending sex abuse scandal that is finally creeping up into the ranks of the Church hierarchy on "gay priests," Commonweal, yet another legitimate site is pointing the finger at the Church hierarchy and the Church's insane doctrine on human sexuality.  A derelict, if not actively involved, Church hierarchy abetted and/or covered up sexual abuse. Adding to the problem was the Church's desperate recruitment of psychologically unfit individuals as it struggled to fill ballooning shortages of candidates for the priesthood.  None of this was unknown to the highest levels at the Vatican as the scandal surrounding Cardinal Theodore McCarrick continues to unfold.  Here are excerpts from Commonweal:

Emerging details about the scope and duration of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s sexually abusive behavior once more underscore the fact that an institutional sickness afflicts the Catholic Church. A predator priest can ascend to princely rank only if the clerical culture around him enables those who are complicit by their silence and failure to act.

The behavior of “Uncle Ted,” as the cardinal insisted he be called by his preferred victims, was something of an open secret at elite levels of the church. As the New YorkTimes noted, multiple reports about McCarrick’s sexual encounters with seminary students were made between 1994 and 2008—to American bishops, to the pope’s representative in Washington, and even to Pope Benedict XVI.  . . . . He even played a prominent role as a spokesperson for the church’s “zero-tolerance” policy on sexual abuse.

The causes of clerical abuse are complex and multilayered. Some Catholic conservatives and others on the right seem not to take this sufficiently into account. [*] First Thingssenior editor Matthew Schmitz recently tweeted: “It will be impossible to address sexual abuse in the Church if bishops and priests do not clearly affirm the Church’s teaching on sex, including same-sex activity. 

A 300-page report, prepared by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the request of the U.S. bishops seven years ago, found no statistical evidence that gay priests were more likely to abuse minors. What’s more, researchers found that the uptick in the number of gay priests from the late 1970s corresponded with “a decreased incidence of abuse-not an increased incidence of abuse.” The disproportionate number of adolescent male victims, according to the report, was linked to opportunity, not to preference or pathology.

A witch-hunt mentality demonizes the vast majority of celibate gay men who are faithful to their vows, serve the church, and are as horrified as anyone at the abuses committed. 

If the church removed all gay priests from ministry today, it would suffer for that loss. Nor would it bring an end to the abuse crisis. The problem is with those bishops, and others with influence in the church, who at best are asleep at the wheel and at worst willing to excuse predatory behavior. Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley this week acknowledged a “major gap” in procedures for how the church deals with a bishop or cardinal accused of abuse, and called for specific new steps. “

There were plenty of red flags about McCarrick, more than enough to stop his ascent into the College of Cardinals. That it was nevertheless allowed to proceed is an institutional failure on a massive scale. No scapegoating will make this mess go away.

And no single step—ending celibacy requirements or allowing priest to marry—will serve as a panacea. The significant spike in abuse cases in the 1960s and 1970s, the John Jay researchers found, had much to do with psychologically unhealthy priests who were not properly screened, and who became clergy at a time when seminary education lacked a focus on psychological-emotional development. Improved seminary training and education in the 1980s, according to the report, contributed to a “sharp and sustained decline” in abuse cases since then.

More important is changing a clerical culture that prizes secrecy and loyalty over truth and transparency. That will be tedious, challenging and essential work. In the ongoing wake of the McCarrick scandal, it’s time to take up that task with greater urgency than ever.

Fear of the Rainbow Flag: Cynical Scapegoating of Gays in Egypt.

Last week in a post I noted the rising tide of homophobia around the world, including here in America under the regime of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, the latter of whom is a Christofascist himself.   Now a piece in the New York Times looks specifically at the growing anti-LGBT zealotry in Egypt, a country where technically homosexuality isn't illegal, but where thuggish rulers and religious fanatics are scapegoating gays as  (i) a means to distract the populous form the failures of both groups to bring prosperity and freedom to the country, and (ii) a way to fabricate an external enemy - western tolerance - to rally support for leaders who could care less about the best interests of the populace.  Ironically, these are  similar to the tactics Der Trumpenführer is employing to bolster his support among evangelical Christians and outright Christofascists here in America. Stated another way, America's would be strong man is mimicking the tactics of real life strong men.  Here are highlights from the article:

On Oct. 21, militants fired rockets and detonated explosives in the desert southwest of Cairo, killing at least 59 Egyptian police officers and security officials in the worst assault on security forces since 2015. The shocking attack is the latest reminder of the very real threat that armed militants pose to Egypt’s security forces.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi seems incapable of quelling this menace. . . . So with such a real and present danger, why would Mr. Sisi’s government, aided by a team of media personalities and religious authorities, spend the past month whipping up a frenzy over another kind of “threat” altogether?

As part of what can best be described as hysterical homophobia, more than 65 people, mostly gay men, have been arrested in the crackdown against L.G.B.T. Egyptians. At least 20 people have received prison sentences, ranging from six months to six years.

This wave of arrests and raids began after gay-pride rainbow flags were flown at a concert by a Lebanese indie-rock band, Mashrou’ Leila, whose lead singer, Hamed Sinno, is openly gay. It was not the first time fans displayed rainbow flags at a Mashrou’ Leila concert, a gay friend who has attended some of the band’s previous concerts in Cairo reminds me. He also reminds me that rainbow flags were flown in Tahrir Square during the 18 days of protest that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Same-sex relationships are not illegal in Egypt, but gay men are arrested under “debauchery” laws. So why now? Why the parade of men “confessing” to being gay and “repenting” on TV talk shows, and the psychiatrists touting “conversion therapy”?

It would be easy to label the crackdown a distraction. There is much that Egyptians need distracting from: disastrous economic austerity policies, the insurgency in Sinai, 60,000 political prisoners.

And it does make for a convenient topic. Egypt’s political parties might disagree on how to remedy any or all of those issues — but homophobia cuts across disagreement. . . . . my friend told me. “Some people think gay people should be stoned, others recommend burning them after stoning, while some sheikhs are saying their hands and legs should be cut on opposite sides of their bodies, and ask in the softest of voices for their imprisonment or deportation.”

But there is more than just distraction at play. A talk-show host who suggested that both terrorism and homosexuality were being used to “ruin our youth” by a nameless external enemy offered perhaps the most honest explanation for this vicious round of homophobia in Egypt: the conflation of a security threat with a “moral” threat.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, increasingly bold expressions of sexual freedom are clearly unsettling regimes accustomed to being guardians not just of “national security” but also of our bodies and sexualities. Mr. Sinno is unapologetically “brown, queer and from a Muslim family” by his own description. . . . . Armed with social media and audacity, more people are questioning taboos around religion and sexuality.

Egypt, of course, is far from alone in its witch hunt. From Chechnya to Azerbaijan and from Tanzania to Indonesia there are similar crackdowns by governments obsessed with policing people’s sexuality. (And let’s not forget that President Sisi’s booster, President Trump, is no friend to L.G.B.T. rights.)

Morality crusades unite military regimes and religious zealots alike. Mr. Sisi, a former army general who became president after forcing out Mohamed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, understands the potency of connecting the catchall “national security” to “inciting debauchery” as a deliberate reminder that the Islamists do not hold the copyright on piety.

On Oct. 19 — a day of global solidarity with L.G.B.T. Egyptians — I saw Mashrou’ Leila in concert in Montreal. That day, a protest had been held outside the Egyptian Consulate there. Some concertgoers flew an Egyptian flag alongside a rainbow flag. Mr. Sinno told the audience that the best way to fight the crackdown in Egypt was to keep up international pressure. He understands the importance of visibility — for safety and for solidarity.

 Human rights around the world used to be a concern for America. Now, under Trump/Pence, not so much.  Indeed, America voted against a United Nations resolution that condemned the death penalty for gays due to their involvement in consenting relationships between adults.  America has indeed fallen and will likely only increase in ugliness under the current misrule. 

Report: Catholic Sexual Abuse Caused by Secrecy and Mandatory Celibacy

I have followed the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal since it first exploded in Boston in 2002.  The expose broken by the Boston Globe coincidentally coincided with my coming out and my efforts to shake off the religious brainwashing of my upbringing as a Roman Catholic were all things sexual were viewed as evil and sinful except in the context of conceiving children - something that helped to increase the rolls of the Catholic Church. It goes without saying that the participants were not supposed to enjoy the conception process. Having been raised Catholic and exposed to the Church's obsession with all things sexual as well as the mandatory celibacy requirement (which historically arose because the Church leadership did not like losing revenues to the families of married priests), I always believed that much of the sexual abuse scandal traced back to the celibacy and the Church's bizarre view of sexuality not to mention the obsession with secrecy among high clergy.  Now, a new Royal Commission report out of Australia (where the scandal has been exploding for more than two years) seems to confirm that celibacy has played a significant role in the widespread sexual abuse  by priests.  The report also notes the dis-ingenuousness of Church efforts to blame the sexual abuse on gay clergy.   The Guardian looks at the report findings:

Mandatory celibacy and a culture of secrecy created by popes and bishops are major factors in why such high rates of child abuse have occurred in the Catholic church, a comprehensive study has found.

The report, which looked at the findings of 26 royal commissions and other inquiries from Australia, Ireland, the UK, Canada and the Netherlands since 1985, found that while the endangerment of children in institutions has been considerably lowered in Australia, children remained at risk in Catholic parishes and schools and Catholic residential institutions in other countries across the world, especially in the developing world where there are more than 9,000 Catholic-run orphanages, including 2,600 in India.

The patriarchal nature of Catholic institutions meant that abuse went unchallenged and, while a small number of nuns were abusers, the report found the risk of offending was much higher in institutions where priests and religious brothers had minimal contact with women. The report estimated about 7% of clergy had abused children between about 1950 and 2000.

“Their contact with women in teacher training institutions would have been carefully proscribed and then they were appointed to male-only schools where they were in charge of young boys and adolescents,” the report said.

“And they were living in all-male religious communities. They had to make do with a sacralised image of a sexless Virgin Mary. It was a recipe for a psycho-spiritual disaster.”

A Catholic priest who assisted the child sexual abuse royal commission, Prof Des Cahill, says discovering he had lived and worked with paedophile priests was part of the reason he has devoted the past five years to analysing why child abuse has plagued the church.

On Wednesday the findings from Cahill and his theologian co-author, Dr Peter Wilkinson, were released in a report, Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: An Interpretive Review of the Literature and Public Inquiry Reports, published by the Centre for Global Research at RMIT University.

The findings explore why the Catholic church and its priests and religious brothers, more than any other religious denomination, have become synonymous with the historical sexual abuse of children.
 I began wondering: ‘Why did this happen?’,” Cahill told Guardian Australia. “I knew some of the priest perpetrators and I studied with them and I lived with one of them. And yet I was never aware while I was in the church. You have to understand, a priest offender is very secretive and doesn’t want to be found out.”

His and Wilkinson’s findings were made after examining reports from royal commissions, academic studies, police reports and church reports from around the world since 1985. Among the findings was that mandatory celibacy was and remains “the major precipitating risk factor for child sexual abuse” and that popes and bishops created a culture of secrecy, leading to a series of gross failures in transparency, accountability, openness and trust.

The issue of confession was also examined. Last month, Australia’s child sex abuse royal commission called for clergy who refused to report child sexual abuse to police because the information was received during a religious confession to face criminal charges.
 The recommendation prompted an angry response from the archbishop of the archdiocese of Melbourne, Denis Hart, who said he would risk going to jail rather than report allegations of child sexual abuse raised during confession, and that the sacredness of communication with God during confession should be above the law.
 The report states that “young and vulnerable Catholic children, especially boys, were in danger and at risk in the presence of psychosexually immature, psychosexually maldeveloped and sexually deprived and deeply frustrated male priests and male religious, particularly those who had not satisfactorily resolved their own sexual identity”.

“This was especially so if these priests and religious were confused or in denial about their homosexual orientation while training and operating in a profoundly homophobic Church environment,” the report found.

Courtin said that the evidence was “absolutely clear” that sexual crimes involving children and paedophilia “have nothing to do with homosexuality at all”.

And homosexuality is one of the reasons or excuses that the church has used for a long time and it’s wrong, inappropriate and inaccurate of them,” she said. “Paedophilia does not equate with homosexuality.” 

After several years of therapy, I finally resolved the psychological damage from my Catholic upbringing. I also left the Catholic Church and after a brief interlude as an Episcopalian, I remain technically a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ("ELCA") which liturgically is like the Catholic Church liturgy prior to the break between Martin Luther and the Catholic Church and which does not have the self-perpetuating Church hierarchy of the Catholic Church ( ELCA bishops must be reviewed and reappointed and local pastors are not imposed by remote and out of touch bishops).

Meanwhile, The Atlantic is reporting on the child pornography charges against a member of the Vatican diplomatic corps in Washington, D.C. (note that the Vatican refused to waive diplomatic immunity which would have allowed prosecution):

The Holy See announced on Friday that a priest who is part of its diplomatic corps has been recalled to Rome following allegations that he violated child-pornography laws. The official had been accredited to serve in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Department of State notified Catholic Church leaders about the alleged crime through diplomatic channels. The Vatican has opened an investigation and is keeping the name of the accused priest confidential. The AP reported that the U.S. government requested that the official’s diplomatic immunity be lifted. The request was denied.

The moral bankruptcy at the Vatican continues despite Pope Francis' improved PR efforts.

Jailing of Russian Anti-Gay Psyhco Will Not End Mistreatement of Gays

Many news outlets have reported on the conviction of Maxim Martsinkevich to five years in prison for his torture and mistreatment of gays.   While Martsinkevich was perhaps a more visible ring leader, there are all too many more like him, all egged on by Russia's anti-gay laws ushered under the regime of Adolph Hitler copy cat, dictator Vladimir Putin.  Anti-gay horrors, of course are not limited to Russian and across the Middle East and many parts of Africa gays live lives of fear and sometimes violence.  Fanning it all is religion - that pestilence to humankind - and opportunist politicians who seek to distract an ignorant populace from the true of extent of their misrule and corruption.  A column in The Daily Beast looks at the continuing anti-gay violence that is all too prevalent.  Here are excerpts:

In a year of bad news for LGBT people across the global south and east, it’s been a good couple of weeks. A court struck down Uganda’s anti-gay law, and the country’s president has backed away from it. Kenya’s parliament rejected a draconian anti-gay bill. And now one of the nastiest men in Russia, Maxim Martsinkevich, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

You may know Martsinkevich from the dozen videos posted on the Russian social networking site VKontakte showing him and his colleagues threatening, beating, stripping, torturing, urinating on, and otherwise harassing gay people. His gang, known as “Occupy Pedophilia,” would lure gay men with the promise of sexual encounters, usually with teenagers, and then humiliate them online.

The video that got Martsinkevich—nicknamed Tesak, or “The Hatchet”—into trouble was a particularly odious one, in which he stripped and beat a gay Iraqi man, shaved his head, painted Stars of David on his body and a rainbow on his forehead, and humiliated him with sex toys.

Presumably, “Iraqi” was not the most startling word in that sentence. Yet interestingly enough, it was the one that got him into trouble with the law. Tesak was jailed not for harassing gay people—that’s basically the law in Russia now—but for being racist.

The Putin regime’s attack on LGBT people has been a piece of its revanchist nationalism, and indeed the extreme right that is now Vladimir Putin’s base has as much animus against foreigners as it does against gays. Long before Tesak launched Occupy Pedophilia, he ran an ultra-nationalist, neo-Nazi group called Format 18, with the same practice of making hideous torture videos—only against foreigners, not gays.

On the other hand, it’s easy to see his conviction as a cynical move by the less than fully independent Russian justice system. Tesak was becoming the public face of Russia’s anti-propaganda law. He was an embarrassment to Putin.

But how can the government object to persecuting gay people when it also persecutes gay people? Tesak’s conviction looks like a convenient way out. He’s thrown in jail, but homophobia is still OK. 

There is, of course, that nagging problem of Occupy Pedophilia’s name and its claim of having tortured more than 1,500 gay men. Perhaps Tesak’s most famous victim was the Ukrainian Alexander Bohun, a former contestant on that country’s version of The X Factor.

And don’t expect OP’s antics to end just because its leader is in jail. Tesak only appears in a fraction of OP videos. There are plenty of other vigilantes interested in torturing gay men with the winking semi-approval of the authorities.

Tesak’s sentence won’t stop the violence. To do that, more fundamental change is needed—starting with the state-sponsored homophobia that encourages such violence. Of course, that Tesak is going to jail is good news. But as long as the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian government, and Russian media spread lies about gays being pedophiles, perverts, or worse, there will surely be other executioners to take his place.