But if you're gay you can still become a Catholic priest. You might have to cover up being agnostic. But you'll definitely get to work with young boys and help "educate" them.
Since the 1961 promulgation "Religiosorum institutio" (in English, "Careful Selection And Training Of Candidates For The States Of Perfection And Sacred Orders"), the ordination of homosexual priests has been forbidden in the Catholic Church.
I did not. Nor do I think they are. You can put me down for thinking that if say a 40-year old man wants to engage in sex with say a 14-year old male that yes there is definitely homosexuality involved. Is pedophilia also involved? Depends on the ages and which definition used.
Regardless it was a joke but one based on factual events widely reported. I knew I risked a little karma loss for saying something potentially un-PC but sometimes I don't care. Good to widen minds sometimes. :P
The person whose mind is most in need of widening here is you. There is very little connection between pedophilia and homosexuality.
If we define pedophilia as interest in sexually immature individuals, then there is a negative correlation between pedophilia and homosexuality. Pedophiles, no matter which gender of child they abuse, strongly tend to be either heterosexual, or else not interested in adults. And when asked to cite what was attractive about their victims, invariably they cite feminine characteristics such as lack of hair.
When homosexuals are accused of pedophilia, they are inevitably involved with boys who are young but sexually mature. While everyone agrees that this is a bad idea, the relative frequency of this interest is no higher than interest in teenage girls among heterosexuals.
I never said there was a connection between them. If they both occur together in some case, they do. If they do not, they do not. That's pretty obvious. And no my mind does not need widening on this point. Everything I've read so far in this thread where somebody thinks they are enlightening has not revealed something I didn't already know. Instead, I seem to be getting persecuted here karma-wise, in a sense, because some HN'ers are attributing viewpoints to me that I do not have, nor have I claimed to have. It would be funny if it were not so frustrating and lame. For example, to be real clear: I do not think homosexuals are bad people. And I think pedophiles are mentally sick, in a way, at a bare minimum, and sometimes can also be morally evil, depending on the particulars. And I do not think all pedophiles are homosexuals or vice versa. So I don't understand why some folks, if they really read what I said strictly, get miffed.
What my original comment, at the head of this thread, was alluding to, in the real world, is the issue where it seems a rather large number of Catholic priests seem to be either (1) gay, or (2) pedophiles, or (3) both. Are all? Of course not. And of course every situation is different. If a middle-aged priest has sex with a 17-year old altar boy, or whatever, then yes by the official psychological definition he is not necessarily a pedophile. But from a legal standpoint, it's an adult involved with a minor, and the media coverage and community reaction around that will blur into it being an adult with a "child", and with the courts now labeling them, in many jurisdictions, as a sex offender. Which then means he is given the fuzzy and technically innacurate, laymen's label of "a pedophile". I'm confident in predicting that a significant percentage of Americans at least would consider a 40/17-year old sex encounter as pedophilia, regardless of whether that is the official definition or not.
Also, I ask all HN'ers to stay polite. We should all write here as if we were conversing with someone face-to-face in the same room. Thanks and this has been a public service announcement. :P
Most pedophiles identify as straight, not gay, and are more often than not married men. So, if anything, the Boy Scouts are exposing these kids to a higher likelihood of being molested than they would if they allowed openly gay scout leaders.
Read that again. Even though the act of pedophilia in this context is one of male-on-male sex, the pedophile would claim that they are straight. Whether or not that's their real sexual orientation is immaterial.
The point being, that men who have already come out of the closet about being gay are far, far less likely to be child molesters than, well, say, homophobes that troll internet message boards.
Well said. Repression may have something to do with it. Its sad, and probably somewhat due to the vicious cycle of demonizing homosexuals which causes some to act out.
I apologize for my careless remark. I volunteer in a boys club, and from that viewpoint pedophilia (against boys) is by definition homosexuality.
But I agree completely, in the population at large its orthogonal. Again I apologize for a hasty remark.
I'd like to think you're not stupid and homophobic, but your posts keep undermining that. There are pedophiles that rape girls, and there are pedophiles that don't discriminate between the sexes.
I guess you don't understand proper subset. He was implying that all pedophiles are gay (or that all gay people are pedophiles which I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't saying that).
And my comment was related to earl's 2nd sentence. The one right before my reply.
And Earl's second sentence, read properly, also points out that paedophilia is orthogonal to homosexuality. He was proving that A is not a proper subset of B by pointing out the elements of A which are not in B. I assume he didn't bother to mention the elements of A which are in B because they're not relevant to the proof at hand.
I pick my words carefully. Not every reader does as much, and sometimes this happens
Perhaps you're carefully picking which words you read instead of carefully picking which words you write.
