Did Catholic Church Sex Abuse Amount to Organized Crime?

If the Mafia had engaged in a systemic system of sexual abuse against children and youths with a coordinated plan across the hierarchy to cover up and in some cases abet the molesters, it is probably a safe bet that this would be deemed to be "organized crime" and prosecution under racketeering and other laws would be brought to bear on those coordinating and participating in the scheme.  Yet, due to undeserved deference to religion and the Catholic Church in particular, no such prosecutions have occurred anywhere in the world.  Meanwhile, more and more cases from across America and the globe continue to show just how pervasive the abuse of children and youths has been and how time and time again the Church protected the predators rather than the victims.  A piece in Religion Dispatches makes the case that RICO laws should be applied against the Church.  Here are excerpts:

The Catholic Church has been trying desperately to suggest that the days of rampant sexual abuse of minors by priests and subsequent cover-ups by bishops are a thing of the past and that the church has moved into a new, more transparent future. But to paraphrase a classic mob movie, just when they think they’re out, they get pulled back in.

First, it was Spotlight’s focus on the Boston-area abuse scandal that proved to be the tipping point for public awareness of widespread abusive priest-shuffling. It also reminded people of just how hard senior Vatican officials like Cardinal Bernard Law worked to keep the church’s complicity covered up.

And just when the publicity over Spotlight’s Academy Award dies down, now comes a hard-hitting report chronicling 50 years of abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese in Pennsylvania. 

It’s the conspiracy nature of the long-running pattern, with both church officials (including two consecutive bishops, and local authorities, including police, judges and district attorneys) colluding to cover up abuse, that led the authors of the report to call the whole mess “soul murder.”

One state legislator is calling for a RICO investigation of the conspiracy, calling it “nothing less than organized crime.”

Despite the pledges by Pope Francis and other Vatican officials to take a zero-tolerance position on abuse and to make a full reckoning of sins of both omission and commission, it appears that the church is still dedicated to protecting its power and privilege over seeking justice for abuse victims. 

The New York Times reports that lobbyists for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference have been working overtime to quash a move to open a “window” that would allow previous abuse victims to sue under a bill moving through the legislature that would remove the statute of limitations for sex abuse crimes and allow victims to sue past the current limit of their 30th birthday.

On one hand, the Vatican is happy to promote its new anti-abuse expert with a high-profile interview with Crux. But on the other, on the ground where it counts, it still flexes its muscle to block a full reckoning with the past—even if financial settlements are an imperfect means of justice.

And in case there’s any doubt that a reckoning is still needed, some 250 additional victims have come forward in Altoona-Johnstown just since the release of the report in March. But due to the church’s lobbying, it doesn’t appear their voices will be heard. On Tuesday, the abuse bill passed a House committee with the window for past abuse cases firmly slammed shut.

Will SCOTUS Throw Out the Right's Immigration Case?

Other than bashing and stigmatizing gays few things bring the far right closer to orgasm that mistreating and demonizing immigrants - correction, non-white immigrants.  The two activities, of course are related in that the far right, especially the "godly Christian" crowd cannot stand anything or anyone who does not conform to their cult and racial niche.  This hatred of the "other" is what is really fueling the challengers to Barack Obama's immigration rules in United States v. Texas regardless of what the anti-immigration forces may claim.  With the United States Supreme Court scheduled to he oral arguments in the case, some now wonder if the court will punt and find that Texas has no standing to bring the challenge.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the possibility.  Here are article highlights:

The great immigration showdown is finally here. Today, the Supreme Court hears ninety minutes’ worth of oral arguments in United States v. Texas, conservatives’ challenge to President Obama’s executive orders on immigration policy.

The Court may decide to dodge the bullet rather than bite it, though.

They have that choice because there are, at heart, two major issues at stake in the case: first, whether Obama exceeded his executive authority, and second, whether states can sue him if so.

Normally, that second question—whether a party has standing—is the kind of thing that only lawyers care about. Standing is a requirement for any lawsuit, and it is at issue in many of them. But standing rarely makes the headlines, because it’s boring to ask whether we should even be asking the question the case is asking. Most non-lawyers would say, Get to the substance, already.

In this case, though, standing is substance. Anyone who watches a Republican debate, knows that immigration policy is a hot issue, and a huge mess. In theory, according to the Immigration & Nationality Act (INA), all eleven million “undocumented immigrants”/ “illegal aliens” (you can usually tell what someone thinks based on which term they use) should be immediately deported from the United States.

In practice, however, only Donald Trump thinks that should really happen, and Trump, of course, is nuts. It would be enormously expensive, disruptive, and cruel to deport so many people at once. Families would be torn apart, and a massive system akin to a police state (internment camps included) would have to be set up, at a direct cost of an estimated $166 billion and an indirect cost of billions more in economic disruption.

As a result, for decades, the federal government has prioritized whom to deport and when. But who gets caught and who doesn’t is often arbitrary, with the government acting like a fisherman with a tiny net, grabbing a few fish at random but letting more slip away. Indeed, progressives have complained that deportations have actually increased under Obama, who is compelled to uphold the existing law.

Comprehensive immigration reform has stalled again and again, most recently in 2013, when a bill with support among conservatives and liberals died in the House due to Tea Party nativist fears.

That is why in 2012, and again in 2014, Obama put into place two administrative policies to attempt to rationalize and prioritize deportations actions. Those policies, DACA and DAPA, would effectively de-prioritize (“defer action” in their terms) about 1.2 million and 4 million people, respectively. For three years, they’d effectively be off the deportation list.

Republicans hate this. As evidenced by Trump’s rise, a significant portion of the Republican base really does want to deport 11 million people.

Here’s where standing comes in. Texas, joined by 24 other states, has said that it will suffer monetary harm if these policies are enacted—specifically, the cost of issuing driver’s licenses to all those now-quasi-legal illegal immigrants.

Of course, that monetary harm isn’t the real reason they’re suing. They’re suing because they’re Republican-led states (15 Democrat-led ones have filed an amicus brief on the other side) and they detest these policies. But this is how standing works all the time.

If Texas succeeds, then theoretically any state could sue the federal government to oppose a policy it doesn’t like: an environmental policy, a trade policy. All federal actions impose some costs on the states; is there anything that they couldn’t challenge?

Perhaps that’s why the district court’s opinion took 50 pages to grant standing to Texas, providing three separate bases for it in an opinion built out of right-wing talking points. But it’s easy to see the Supreme Court going the other way. Immigration is a political question, yet here it is at the Supreme Court, which is supposed to decide the law.

So the Supreme Court may well say “we don’t decide cases like these” both for reasons of Roberts Court judicial conservatism, and because if the Court does get to the merits of this case, we may end up with yet another 4-4 deadlock, and nothing resolved whatsoever.

On Obama’s side, the government has argued that DACA and DAPA are within the executive branch’s discretion. The government has to prioritize somehow, and this is no different from how previous administrations have prioritized for decades. 

If the Court reaches those questions, there will be ample law to guide it. But if the two sides are actually arguing politics while pretending to argue law, that’s a good sign that this is a political question after all, and not an actual case or controversy between parties with standing to sue. Maybe this debate belongs more on the courthouse steps than in the courtroom itself.

I hope Chief Justice John Roberts hands a defeat to the right wing hate merchants.

Most American Catholics Ignore the Pope and Vatican on Moral Guidance

A new Pew Research Center survey contains more bad news for the Vatican and Pope Francis - most Catholics look to their own conscience rather than the Pope and/or Church dogma for moral Guidance.  Thus, one has to wonder why the media is so breathlessly reporting Church synods on the families or Pope Francis' recent blather about divorced Catholics and gays which did nothing to change long standing Church misogyny.  Here are some sample findings:

About three-quarters of U.S. Catholics (73%) say they look to their own conscience “a great deal” for guidance on difficult moral questions. Far fewer Catholics say they rely a great deal on the Catholic Church’s teachings (21%), the Bible (15%) or the pope (11%) for such guidance.

Catholics who are highly religious are more likely than less religious Catholics to turn to church teachings, the Bible or the pope for guidance on difficult moral questions. Still, far fewer highly religious Catholics say they rely a great deal on any of these three sources for guidance on tough moral questions than say they rely on their own conscience.

Among those who identify as "Nones" church attendance and/or holding religious belief is viewed as having little bearing on whether or no one is a moral person.  Indeed, honesty is one of the aspects that is seen as something that is essential to being a moral person.  Ironically, among Christofascists, honesty holds little value given the incessant lies that they disseminate about others.  Here is some of what Pew found in this regard:

Relatively few religious “nones,” who make up 78% of the non-Christians surveyed, say religious beliefs or behaviors are central to what it means to be a moral person. For example, only about three-in-ten respondents without any religious affiliation say believing in God is either essential (13%) or important but not essential (18%) to what being a “moral person” means to them. And only about one-in-ten religious “nones” say attending religious services is essential (2%) or important but not essential (10%) to what it means to be a moral person. By contrast, about half or more of the unaffiliated say honesty and gratitude are essential to being a moral person.

More Sunday Male Beauty

Dedicated to Utah Republicans and Gail Dines

The Mormon Church's "War on Pornography"

Gail Dines - Mormon ally

Recently, I noted that an effort was underway in Utah to outlaw pornography - even though Utah has the highest rate of  subscriptions to Internet porn sites in the nation.  Shortly thereafter, an op-ed appeared in the Washington Post that sought to argue that pornography is a "public health crisis" supposedly because porn encourages violence against women, etc.   It turns out that one needs to hear the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say.  The author of the op-ed, Gail Dines, is described in a piece in The Atlantic as a self-identifying radical feminist and “anti-porn advocate,” who sees male aggression under ever bush (admittedly, being gay, I don't exactly watch straight porn, but Dines' claims in the piece struck me as more than a bit extreme).  Moreover, she has been in league with the Mormon Church and its political puppets. Here are excerpts fro the piece in The Atlantic which looks at the bizarre alliance of these unlikely forces:

To sociologist Gail Dines, a self-identifying radical feminist and “anti-porn advocate,” these findings added to a body of evidence that she deemed conclusive. Dines believes that non-coercive pornography cannot exist in a capitalist society, where sex-based media will always lead to an industry that becomes a violent manifestation of structural inequalities. In The Washington Postthis weekend, Dines wrote a column that spread widely: “Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Matter: It’s a Public-Health Crisis.” The divisive proclamation was occasioned by a bill passed last month in Utah declaring pornography to be “a public-health crisis.” The bill, like the phrase, traces back to Dines, who has spoken and lectured on the evils of pornography around the world. Dines made the same argument to legislators in the U.S. Capitol Building, at an anti-pornography summit. There she reached an unlikely confederate, a Republican state senator from Utah named Todd Weiler. A blonde, 48-year-old divorce attorney, Weiler returned to his home state to champion the bill. When the text of the bill made it to the Internet, Weiler recalls, it “went viral” and he was “immediately inundated with criticism.” This was, in part, over contentious claims being presented as simple fact, like “WHEREAS, pornography use is linked to lessening desire in young men to marry, dissatisfaction in marriage, and infidelity.” For facts and science, the senator directs me to a Utah-based group called Fight the New Drug. (The new drug is pornography.) The group’s “Facts” page offers much in the way of terse declarative aphorisms; such facts as “Porn hates families,” “Porn leaves you lonely,” and “Porn addiction escalates.”  The group denies a formal affiliation with the Mormon church, though as journalist Samantha Allen notes, its founders are all Mormon, and its facts rely on claims from Mormon author Donald Hilton’s He Restoreth My Soul: Understanding and Breaking the Chemical and Spiritual Chains of Pornography through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Olson and company sell the ideological argument as a “just the facts” approach. Less transparent than an openly ideology-driven strategy, the just-the-facts approach is rather a just-some-of-the-facts approach. Comparisons of drugs and porn have proven less clear-cut than suggested by the intuitive leap that all dopamine-based reward systems must be different degrees of the same thing. While drug abuse is perennially among the leading drivers of morbidity and mortality, the American Academy of Psychiatry has repeatedly deemed evidence insufficient that sex and porn addiction be recognized as mental disorders.  [R]esearcher Nicole Prause . . . found in another study that watching pornography did not seem to kill love, but rather increased people’s likelihood of being aroused by other media, and increased the desire for sex with their partners. The journalist Maria Konnikova recounted last year in Aeon that when Danish criminologist Berl Kutchinsky charted sexual aggression in the two decades after Denmark and Sweden legalized pornography, the crimes did not increase in step with pornography distribution, but actually declined. This suggested to him that pornography was an outlet for sexual expression less than a driver of problematic real-world behavior.  While Dines and others cite many correlations between pornography consumption and negative health outcomes, the causal relationship is rarely explicit. Making that leap is especially tenuous when studies rely on subjects recalling and reporting information about taboo behaviors and thoughts, a notoriously unreliable approach.

In my personal view, what really causes porn use is sexual dysfunction stemming from religious brainwashing that makes normal human sexuality into something vile and dirty that must be repressed. The resulting self-hate and sexual repression are the real triggers for porn use and fulfilling relationships.  Look no farther than the Catholic priesthood or the Bible Belt with its high divorce rate, high teen pregnancy rate, and volumes of false piety to see the fruits of psyche killing religious dogma.   

Kasich and McCrory Confirm They Are Bigoted Assholes

Sunday morning news shows today underscored the reality that both North Carolina's mental midget governor, Pat McCrory, and GOP presidential candidate John Kasich are nothing more than bigoted assholes and more or less harbor anti-gay animus.  Kasich went to far as saying that gays need to :just get over it" when it comes to the discrimination that they face.  Meanwhile, the brain dead McCrory could not even correctly name the Human Rights campaign and suggested that positive support for HB2 from a tiny black Christian group outweighed the outrage over the heinous law being voiced by 160 large corporate organizations, many of which bring vast amounts of revenue to his state.  Having been once fired for being gay, I can assure Kasich that it is not something one just gets over.  Not when it puts your children at risk and forces you into bankruptcy.  The man is an utter asshole.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement on Kasich's unbelievable batshitery:

Republican Gov. John Kasich on Sunday told LGBT people who face discrimination they should just get over it. The third-place GOP presidential candidate who is the sitting governor of Ohio also told people of faith who oppose same-sex marriage and LGBT people to "pray for" them. Both comments were made under the guise of uniting the nation.

CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" asked Kasich if there are any steps he "would take to try to stop states from passing" anti-LGBT, so called "religious freedom" laws. The Ohio governor responded, "No, I wouldn't," then admitted that he hadn't even "thought about" it.

"There is a legitimate concern for people being able to have their deeply held religious beliefs, religious liberty," Kasich continued. "But there's also people who we shouldn't be discriminating against. We need to have a balance," he insisted.

"If you don't like what somebody's doing, pray for them," the governor suggested. "And if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just, for a second, get over it, you know, because this thing will settle down."

He went on to call the fight for equal civil rights for LGBT people "a wedge issue that can be exploited by people on both sides," and concluded that "we need a united America, not a divided America.  

Let's take away Kasich's income, allow his children to be bullied, and have him turned away from businesses and see how quickly he "just gets over it."

As for Pat McCrory, the man seemingly is a complete simpleton or is at least doing all he can to come across as one as Think Progress reports after McCrory appeared on Meet the Press today.  Here are excerpts:

Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) went on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday to defend the sweeping anti-LGBT law he signed last month. It did not go well for him.

Over the nearly 10-minute interview host Chuck Todd hammered at McCrory’s widely-debunked talking points.

Todd began by highlighting how much the law has already hurt the Tar Heel state economically, noting that 160 companies have called for the law’s repeal. “Bloomberg, Capital One, United Airlines, Williams-Sonoma — that’s just on Friday,” he observed, adding that the law has cost state that at least $39.7 million in lost revenue already. He asked McCrory if he has any regrets about signing the law.

McCrory responded that he would “always call out government overreach,” like Charlotte’s law, blaming “the left” for passing a mandate on “every private sector employer” in the city. He then boasted that while the business community has criticized him, people at “an African American buffet restaurant” in the small city of Hamlet, NC had thanked him protecting them.

 What passes for intelligence in today's Republican Party is truly frightening!!

Ted Cruz’s Coup Against Right-Wing Queen of Hate

Over the years I have followed right wing :family values" groups to know what the enemy is up to so to speak.  One of the groups I have monitored is Eagle Forum - Phyllis Schlafly's organization that is steadfastly against women's rights, gay rights (even though Schlafy has a gay child) and which has a strong racist under current to it - like most lily white "Christian" organizations.  Moreover, Schlafly's an egomaniac with a ego as large as Donald Trumps - which is why she has been eager to endorse Trump's fascist agenda.  Now, in a delicious coup attempt, it appears that Schlafy is at risk of being dethroned from her organization by board members who support of Ted Cruz.  Making it more delicious, one of Schlafy's own children is seemingly are part of the would be palace coup.  Here are highlights from The Daily Beast:

One of the right-wing’s most prominent empires is reeling—and its president says it’s Ted Cruz’s fault.  

Eagle Forum, a conglomerate of conservative groups which anti-feminist icon PhyllisSchlafly started in 1972, has been rocked by inner turmoil over the last week that has pit family members against each other. 

And the group’s head, Ed Martin, says Cruz’s campaign is using its much-discussed “dirty tricks” to sow conflict in the organization as revenge for Schlafly’s endorsement of Donald Trump. 

Schlafly, one of conservatives’ most prominent and visible leaders, played a key role in blocking the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment, and her group claims 80,000 members.

Martin said the Cruz team set its sights on Eagle Forum when Schlafly endorsed the Texan’s opponent. And he said Cruz supporters in the organization leaked private emails to the campaign, and that Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe, confronted him about statements in the leaked emails.

Since the first Republican nominating contest, the Cruz campaign has faced allegations that its staff uses underhanded and shady tactics to pull off wins. Cruz himself apologized to then-candidate Ben Carson for an email that went to Cruz supporters the day of the Iowa caucuses suggesting Carson was about to pull out of the race. And Trump regularly criticizes Cruz’s personal integrity, leading rally crowds in chants of “Lyin’ Ted! Lyin’ Ted!”

Not everyone blames Cruz, of course. Adams and other board members—allied against Martin—adamantly dispute that 2016 politicking had anything to do with recent tensions. Nevertheless, the rift shows just how tense this election cycle has become for the Schlaflys, one of the conservative movement’s founding families—and just how fast seemingly unassailable organizations can descend into chaos.

[T]he board passed resolutions to fire Martin as president of that particular organization and to take control of its bank account, which Martin said holds $4 million. When that happened, Schlafly dissented, registering her support for Martin. Martin’s leadership of a separate Eagle Forum group went unchallenged. 

Martin’s sudden firing threw Eagle Forum into chaos, with the anti-Martin board members and Schlafly herself issuing separate statements with contradictory explanations of what went down. It seems likely that more fights will come as Eagle Forum’s board and leadership struggle for power.

For some, these fights are personal. One board member who voted to depose Martin, Anne Cori, is Schlafly’s daughter. 

Cori endorsed Ted Cruz in January. Fellow board members Cathie Adams, Eunie Smith, Rosina Kovar, and Carolyn McLarty have all endorsed the Texas senator as well.

Schlafly didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from The Daily Beast. But in an interview with World Net Daily, she indicated that she thinks the group’s troubles are political payback. “This is a complete takeover attempt,” she told the site. 

In my view, Schlafy is one foul individual and the collapse of her organization would be a positive development for America.  The ultimate irony is that while she blathers about "family values," the groups actual values are akin to those of the notorious Borgia family in Italy.  

Sunday Morning Male Beauty

2016 Commonwealth Dinner

Last evening the husband and I attended the 2016 Commonwealth Dinner in Richmond.  It was an amazing event and coming to Richmond also gave us an opportunity to see friends - lunch at Can Can, a great French restaurant in Carytown and brunch today at another fun spot - and help support the effort to drag Virginia into the 21st century. We are fortunate that a friend let us use her beautiful, historic home in the Fan District for the weekend while she was out of town.  The photo above is as we headed off to the event with a friend who lives in Richmond.

A highlight of the evening was when out friend Charles Ford was recognized as an Outstanding Virginian.  Among his many activities, Charles has written a book:

A spin-off of his recent research is a pictorial history of LGBT life in Hampton Roads — written with his research partner, Dr. Jeffrey Littlejohn of Sam Houston State University, in Texas, and published in March 2016. It features images of local people and early public events. “It just scratches the surface of available pictures from local archives,” says Charles. Charles used some of these images, blown up to poster size, to celebrate local LGBT history in an exhibition for last year’s Norfolk Pride event, which also featured some panels from the AIDS quilt. As part of the exhibition, Charles led a tour of LGBT history sites in downtown Norfolk. “Most of the actual buildings are gone,” he says, “but it’s interesting to imagine LGBT life in Norfolk in the middle and late twentieth century when Norfolk lived to its long-standing reputation as the ‘wickedest city in America.’”

Again, it was a great evening!

Lt. Governor Northam: Anti-LGBT bill Threatens Virginia’s Economy

Ralph Northam speaking at a friend's home

As North Carolina Republicans are hopefully learning, hate and bigotry are not good for a state's economy.  In an op-ed the Virginian Pilot, Lt. Governor Ralph Northam makes that very argument and states that Virginia GOP/Christofascist efforts to enact similar animus based bills in Virginia threatens the states economy.  In my view, the Christofascists and their political whores in the Republican Party at all levels need to be defeated and their beliefs need to be thrown on the trash heap of history where they can join beliefs that supported slavery, segregation and so many other horrors brought to mankind by religion.  Here are op-ed highlights:

A governor’s priorities and values make an enormous difference in the direction of a state. Recent events have shown us that having the right governor can make all the difference.

Last month, Gov. Terry McAuliffe vetoed Senate Bill 41. The bill would discriminate against thousands of Virginians and send the absolute wrong message to current and prospective employers who want their employees and their families to live in a welcoming and inclusive commonwealth.

North Carolina’s Republican governor recently signed that state’s House Bill 2, one of the most anti-LGBT laws in the country, and an upsetting response to a non-discrimination law passed in the city of Charlotte.

The negative response has been overwhelming, with more than 90 major employers calling on Gov. Pat McCrory to repeal the bill.

The response has already caused McCrory to backpedal, signing an executive order to prevent state employees from being fired for being gay or transgender. His action, however, stops far short of correcting the ills of HB2.

I cannot imagine why any member of the LGBT community would want to visit a state with such backwards legislation.

Why does this matter in Virginia? As a member of McAuliffe’s Economic Development Partnership and the Virginia Tourism Corporation, I work hard to make sure that Virginia is business-friendly and welcoming to all. The passage of SB41 through our General Assembly sends a signal to major companies, CEOs, and talented workers that Virginia could be the next North Carolina if we’re not careful.

Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson said “As a global hospitality leader and multistate employer, these legislative skirmishes can be frustrating and costly. We still see a patchwork of gaps in state and local nondiscrimination laws that add complications and uncertainty for our people and local managers. It dismays many of us that, in 29 states, people are still at risk of losing their job just for being gay or transgender. Predictability in nondiscrimination laws would be welcome.”

Businesses should be interested in serving the most customers the best product possible, not figuring out the gender or relationship status of people who walk in the door. When Virginia offers a pro-business, all-are-welcome environment, we are better able to compete with other states.

Especially in light of federal budget cuts and sequestration, we have to continue to be innovative and forward thinking to grow our economy. This type of legislation hurts our efforts to attract new businesses and increase jobs, and that is why inclusion will continue to be one of my top priorities.

That means recruiting new businesses and supporting current businesses in order to bring good-paying jobs and top talent. That means providing basic services that every citizen needs in order to contribute to our common good. And that means ensuring that every Virginian has a fair shot to reach their full potential.

I will fight to keep Virginia focused on these priorities. I urge the General Assembly to sustain the governor’s veto of SB41 so that companies, families and the entire country knows that Virginia is open for business and welcoming to all.

In my view, conservative Christianity is a virulent cancer on society that needs to be eradicated,  If one over the course of history, I believe Christianity - especially conservative strains - have brought more harm than benefit to the world.  Now, conservative Christianity is a main force seeking to drag America backward in time and to grant unconstitutional special privileges to those motivated by hate and bigotry and who embrace ignorance and superstition rather than knowledge and science.