When the organization as a whole only exists to enforce that morality code, it makes more sense that they would also heavily police internally as well.
Do remember that this particular morality code is an unfashionable one. There are other taboos that also cause a waste of resources by people seeking corrective action where no law is broken and no one is victimized. And those are cheered on because those codes are fashionable.
Sure, this is dumb through and through. But this scenario just has properties that lend themselves to headlines meant to stir people up.
Which ones?
Sounds exactly like the kind of thing one national political parties would have done to another prior to the fairly recent widespread acceptance of gay marriage.
These people are pillars of their community. To have them teaching other people and leading is just disgusting from their perspective.
Look, I support gay rights, I'm the furthest thing from catholic. But I understand how many communities find homosexuality unnatural and wrong. You should respect that and NOT join that community. Just like how Catholics shouldn't enforce their ideas on the rest of the world, you shouldn't enforce yours either.
> Look, I support gay rights
Not sure how you can support gay rights and also be ok with organisations spying on gay people (specifically because they're gay).
One can debate whether or not this practice should be illegal, but it's clearly wrong, even by the tenets of Catholicism itself. Why are they not also spying on straight priests using Tinder?
Also, wouldn't that be an extremely weird and creepy thing for The Vegan Society to do? I’m surprised you’d offer this analogy as a defense of the behavior in question.
“That would be spying on non-vegans…” Right, some of the signs are flipped, but the concept is still the same - an organization promoting a particular ethical standard is surveilling its members adherence to that standard.
“Weird and creepy…” Yes, certainly! But not against vegan rights, not discriminating against vegans, not “targeting vegans (specifically because they are vegan)”. I was responding to the claim that supporting gay rights is incompatible with tolerating this practice.
My reply is more referring to the intent of the parent comment. As in how is spending "millions" justifiable to root out gay people in a catholic organization.
Perhaps you can think of a justification for all this, but I haven’t seen a coherent one given so far in this thread.
Being a pedophile isn't against the law, only engaging on pedophiliac desires is illegal. Therefore I should be ok with pedophiles being leaders of our community and teachers. Right? Wrong.
Examining the technicalities of the rules is just pedantry. There is an obvious intent and overall meaning behind the rules.
>Perhaps you can think of a justification for all this, but I haven’t seen a coherent one given so far in this thread.
Thanks for being so polite. This is obviously against the rules here, you're saying it to trigger me.
The comparison with pedophilia is so obviously inappropriate (and liable to unnecessarily inflame emotions in the context of this thread) that it makes me question whether you're engaging with this topic in good faith.
If you do have a point to make, could I ask you to please find a way to make it without reference to pedophilia, which has nothing to do with gay priests using hookup apps to talk to other adult gay men.
Not necessarily. Depending on the state, it's technically pedophilia/rape when a 18 year old female has sex with a 17 year old. Let's say the 18 year old is a virgin and kind of innocent while the 17 year old is a big burly guy and has already had sex with dozens of people. In this case, many states classify 17 year old male as the one getting raped.
The technicalities here literally mask the intent. Intent is what matters here and the circumstances here make the intent less clear in such a way that the technical law can't fully articulate true justice.
But you don't need me to explain this. You are fully aware of what I mean here. When a homosexual man becomes a teacher for an all boys school something is wrong. When a homosexual man joins an organization against homosexuality something is also wrong. It makes perfect sense for organizations to spend money to get rid of these people.
>The comparison with pedophilia is so obviously inappropriate (and liable to unnecessarily inflame emotions in the context of this thread) that it makes me question whether you're engaging with this topic in good faith.
I throw this right back at you, your response is not in good faith. You're trying to start something here. I think you're very intelligent and attempting to deliberately turn this conversation into a witch hunt against me.
It is also not inappropriate from many peoples perspective including the people in the article. Homosexuality from the perspective of many conservative and religious groups is Just as deviant as pedophilia. From this reasoning, it makes sense why such a group would form to weed out homosexual priests. Unfortunately, the technical wording of the catholic rules on this matter doesn't govern their intents and feelings about it, and thus they act on their feelings rather then the rules themselves.
It's not about whether the existence of these groups is right or wrong. It's whether these anti-homosexual groups exiling a homosexual who joined their group is right or wrong.
I'm sorry to say, it's right. Those people shouldn't have joined in the first place. If you're not supporting and acting for the principles of this group you shouldn't join. Bottom line. The intent of the action is right, the intent of the people joining the group IS NOT.
I also flagged your post. Despite me giving you a good faith answer, I still consider your answer as someone who is obviously trying to start a witch hunt and get me banned. You are not acting in good faith; you have an agenda and your answer is manipulatively hiding that fact. This type of behavior is a hundred times more vile and insidious then someone who is just trolling (and I'm OBVIOUSLY not).
I recommend we end the conversation here before it gets out of hand. Good day.
Edit: This sentence here was ADDED to your response AFTER I made this reply:
"If you do have a point to make, could I ask you to please find a way to make it without reference to pedophilia, which has nothing to do with gay priests using hookup apps to talk to other adult gay men. "
Again, even if Catholics somehow see homosexuals as being deviant in a way comparable to pedophiles (and I hope that most don't!), homosexuals clearly don't present the same danger to others that pedophiles do. This is why the analogy fails for me, and I'd rather you found another one.
I have no interest in 'getting you banned', by the way.
Edit: On closer reading, I am surprised to find this sentence in a comment from someone who earlier claimed to be a supporter of gay rights:
>When a homosexual man becomes a teacher for an all boys school something is wrong
I think perhaps we are now seeing your true point of view.
Except if you read ANY of the paragraphs you'll see that it's relevant. Many Catholics view homosexuals in the same way they view pedophilia (with disgust) and don't want homosexuals in leadership positions. I'm sorry this analogy is apt and you know it from your other comments. Live with it.
>I have no interest in 'getting you banned', by the way.
Then don't accuse me of not commenting on good faith. Don't point fingers. Accusations and attacks on someones character as if they're in violation of the rules here can get people banned.
>I think perhaps we are now seeing your true point of view.
What view? That homosexuals are the same as regular human beings with ulterior motives and incentives? What? you think I should just assume that if someone is gay then he's a paragon of moral goodness? If a man who loves sushi goes to a place that exclusively sell sushi it is reasonable to assume he wants sushi. It is reasonable to question that act.
If that man went to a food court that happens to have sushi then it's reasonable to assume otherwise. But such is not the case when a gay man becomes the leader of a boy scout troop. He may have good intentions, but it is highly highly reasonable to assume he does not.
>Edit: On closer reading, I am surprised to find this sentence in a comment from someone who earlier claimed to be a supporter of gay rights:
I support gay rights in the same way I support human rights. I don't give you or gay people special treatment. If a gay person commits a crime he's a criminal. Your statement here is trying to put me in a box. It's like you're saying that If someone can even just assume that a gay person could have the proclivity of doing something unethical then how could that person be a supporter of gay rights? Impossible!
This portion of your comment is unreasonable. Girl Scout troops welcome male leaders, including heterosexual male leaders, without any insinuation of pedophilia or child sexual abuse.[1] There is no evidence that child sexual abuse is more of an issue for homosexual males than it is for heterosexual males,[2] and therefore no legitimate reason for you to suggest that homosexual male leaders of boy scout troops are more problematic than heterosexual male leaders of girl scout troops.
[1] Example: https://www.girlscoutsni.org/en/our-council/news/2016/dads_w...
[2] Written by a professor who specializes in the area of clerical sexual abuse: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/10/22/no-homosexu...
There is a reason to suspect a single heterosexual male joining a girl scout troop for the same reason you'd suspect a single male joining an all female yoga class.
There's a degree of common sense here that's being deliberately ignored. If a pedophile who's never acted out on his desires becomes a scout leader it is completely logical and wise to question his intentions as it is to question the intentions of a male girl scout leader or a gay boy scout leader.
You have to look at circumstance and evidence and nuance. You can't just build simplistic logic of "this exists and therefore the following must be completely true". No. Life is much more complex such that if your own child was part of a troop and ANY person who matches the profile of the characters described above MUST be questioned for the safety of your child.
Gay male leaders can also have son(s) or family in boy scout troups. The Boy Scouts of America stopped prohibiting gay individuals from becoming members in 2013 and stopped prohibiting gay scout leaders from holding memberships in 2015.* The majority of homosexual males are not pedophiles, just as the majority of heterosexual males are not pedophiles, so your reasoning is faulty. There is no legitimate reason to view homosexual males with any more suspicion than heterosexual males in scouting.
* https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/dont-clap-just-yet-bo...
https://www.them.us/story/illegal-for-catholic-schools-to-fi...
If you absolutely insist on making this a discussion about pedophilia (even extending your unpleasant insinuations to gay men who are boy scout leaders), then I’m calling it quits here. The subject of the article is gay priests talking to other adult gay men on dating apps. Even if a significant number of mainstream Catholics think that being gay is equivalent to being a pedophile (which I doubt), then that is still no reason for the rest of us to make such an association.
I suggested no such thing, it's just more manipulation from you. This is what I suggested: I suggested that it's extremely strange for a gay man to be teaching at an all boys school and it's highly reasonable to suspect that his intentions are unethical.
If I could read the mind of such a teacher and I can see his intentions are good, by god I will fight for that teachers right to work there. Barring that I can only make the best logical judgment given the information that I have and that judgement is either the teacher leaves or I put my kid in another school/classroom.
>If you absolutely insist on making this a discussion about pedophilia (even extending your unpleasant insinuations to gay men who are boy scout leaders),
I never insisted on such a thing. I am simply clearing my name on the accusations you continue to pile on to me one after another. You accuse me of using pedophilia as some sort of deliberate inflammatory weapon, all I did was point out that I AM NOT. There is no insistence that we continue the conversation along those lines.
I want a discussion but apparently I can't have one because your attitude is combative and accusatory. It's characteristic of activists of gay people and many many activists nowadays. They use accusatory tactics of boxing people into horrible labels like "racist", "misogynistic". It's largely an effective tactic, but it's so effective that many times it's used as a mechanism to gain power and dominate others.
Activists like you don't want to engage in meaningful discussion, you just want to dominate. To achieve these goals what you do is misconstrue your opponents intention, you throw away all nuance and deliberately try to simplify your opponent and his actions so that he or she will fit into the box you want him in. When you successfully do this then you execute your main weapon of calling him "racist", "sexist" or any other horrible term that carries a history too horrible to justify using such words with such frivolity.
So what I'm doing is I have to continuously CLARIFY what I am saying. I have to reemphasize the nuance behind what I am saying so that I protect myself from being nailed onto that label. You literally attempted to do this to me earlier.
>Even if a significant number of mainstream Catholics think that being gay is equivalent to being a pedophile (which I doubt), then that is still no reason for the rest of us to make such an association.
I never said the "rest of us" have to make that association. I am simply saying why it makes sense for Catholics to want to root out their leaders who engage in homosexual behavior. Personally, I don't care if a gay man is elected mayor but it makes sense to me why a catholic doesn't want a priest to be gay. I am also saying it's justified for such priests and leaders within the catholic community to be fired.
Your suspicions are unreasonable. As I mentioned before, heterosexual male teachers are not automatically viewed with moral suspicion in all-girls schools (second example: https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-perils...), so it is unreasonable to automatically suspect that homosexual male teachers in all-boys schools are unethical. You are applying a double standard to homosexual males that society does not apply to heterosexual males.
There's nuance in this you're not seeing.
Those teachers may be married and/or have daughters. A single male SHOULD be questioned.
> You are applying a double standard to homosexual males that society does not apply to heterosexual males.
Again simplistic logic. A double standard does not preclude it from being true. You have to see motive. Your link isn't evidence for anything. Can you read the minds of those teachers? Do you know if anything happened behind closed doors?
By virtue of once being a young single heterosexual male with no children I know how these men think. A high school teacher at an all female school is not only fighting external forces of how he's perceived but the internal forces of his instincts. If an attractive female HS student makes a move, the temptation is real.
Typically for males, though, the consequences of such violations are a hundred times more severe then if a female did it so you tend to see female teachers violate this rule more regularly.
Homosexual male teachers may also be married and/or have sons. Your entire line of reasoning is invalidated by your refusal to consider homosexual males in the same light as heterosexual males.
No, that is incorrect. There is nothing wrong with all-girls schools having heterosexual male teachers (example: https://girlsschools.org/advocacy/blog/2017/01/10/all-girls-...), so there is nothing wrong with all-boys schools having homosexual male teachers. You posting this sentence undermines your claim that your comparison of homosexuality to pedophilia (two things with wildly different acceptance rates among Catholics and among people in general) was in good faith.
Catholics do enforce their ideas on the rest of the world, as many Christians in positions of power do. Especially in the US. Especially recently, with the surge of extremist anti-LGBT and anti abortion laws, all predicated philosophically on Christian doctrine. People who find homosexuality unnatural and wrong should not be respected, or simply let be, any more than virulent racists or anti-Semites. Tolerance for the intolerant only leads in the extermination of the tolerant.
This is awfully hyperbolic, I cannot take it seriously because it comes across as an indictment of tolerance and an endorsement of intolerance as a moral imperative. Granted, I'm sure the implication is that it would be a 'righteous' kind of intolerance, but it is rooted in absolutism nonetheless.
It's a very simple concept, described by Karl Popper in a single straightforward paragraph, commonly referred to as the Paradox of Tolerance. It's one of those lessons that came out of the aftermath of the Holocaust, which for some reason people go through great pains to refuse to comprehend.
That's fine - should you ever find yourself as part of a demographic that some other group wants eradicated, feel free to defend to the death their right to organize and recruit and argue for that, and tolerate their hatred as much as you like. In fact, just out of principle, make sure they have access to as many platforms as they want and can gather as much political power as possible. Maybe even try to engage them in debate, despite the unequal power dynamic between truth and lies (particularly in the modern ecosystem of engagement-driven social media and manufactured reality) - sunlight is the best disinfectant after all.
I'm sure it'll all work out OK.
>"That's fine - should you ever find yourself as part of a demographic that some other group wants eradicated." How do you know I'm not?
>"In fact, just out of principle, make sure they have access to as many platforms as they want" Just having a platform, or being on lots of platforms, does not guarantee an ideology will succeed or spread substantially.
>"Maybe even try to engage them in debate, despite the unequal power dynamic between truth and lies" Refuting lies is difficult, but it is still worth doing. I think its better than giving up and using force.