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Comment by VictorPath | Hacker News Reader

I have to laugh about all these comments talking about the left and pedophilia, as if conservative religious organizations are not rife with child molestation.

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Why even "the left"? When Marco from the article was put into foster care, both West Berlin and West Germany had conservative governments.

Mostly because the idea that children are sexual and can consent to sex was carried by movements and organizations that later became the German Green party. They're socially progressive (and economically center-left, I'd say, but clearly much less on the left spectrum about economic issues) and are generally considered to be part of "the left".

Helmut Kentler, the psychologist mentioned in the article, was also generally considered to be part of "the left".

I have to burst your bubble here. Conservative institutions suffer from much less child abuse accounts than progressive, "leftist" institutions. If you want a good example, compare rates of child abuse between the Catholic Church and US public schools. The latter is rife with such accounts, both in relative and absolute terms. I say there is an association where the greater the deviation from conservative, traditional values, the more scandalous idiosyncrasies of the individuals manifest.

Is this funny to you? Or are you using some rhetorical flourish to morally grandstand? Either way, your style of retort is what I dearly hate about the present world. Maybe spend less time laughing at strangers on the internet and consuming raw propaganda; and more time education yourself on the statistics of the topic your are weaponizing.

Just a thought. Let me know if you want me to substantiate any of the points I mentioned.

https://sites.law.duq.edu/juris/2019/03/16/catholic-priest-s...

Interesting comment.

As a Catholic, it's interesting because we (Catholics who pay attention to this drama) all know exactly where the pedophilia scandal originated from and how it happened, and we know that it was several orders of magnitude smaller than the ongoing child abuse that happens in public schools. I hate to sing this same song, but the media really does use this scandal as a headline grabbing tool because the Catholic Church is still a somewhat powerful institution in the United States. And so people imagine or invent a meme of the Church as some kind of pedo factory, when in reality you can identify a specific cohort of people who all went to Seminary at the same time for specific reasons and spread the disease.

Can you substantiate that a little? I do not doubt you! But I'm from a more-or-less agnostic protestant household and my perception has been that the Catholic thing is a pervasive issue, meanwhile I've heard very little/nothing systematic about public schools.

But I recognize this could just be me succumbing to headline bias because I'm very low-info about the whole thing.

What a lovely username you got.

It's incompatible to compare 1 institution that is as broad and govern by different bodies of rules, regulations and laws in contrast with another institution that is whole private and is mostly run as a decentralized club.

Especially when a teacher is not arbitrary put into the position, which is why people and the media is more pissed with religious institutions rather than individual teachers.

I think the key difference is that "the left" is more open to adding previously taboo activities or beliefs into its mainstream which can be used as a vector to legitimize abuse. While on "the right" it's more about abusing the power and trust that already exists in conservative communities. Which is worse? I don't think it matters to the victims, but in terms of discussions a difference certainly exists.

I think there's two sides of looking at it, one of individual and secretive, the other is academic and desire for governmental policies

Isn't that whataboutism ?

What part of "whataboutism" is a bad argument?

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