Post by bobq on Nov 14, 2011 12:32:12 GMT -5
Penn State and the Church
Editorial from our Nov. 20 issue.
Share by THE EDITORS 11/13/2011 Comments (3)
When a grand jury indicted a former Penn State football assistant coach on eight counts of child sexual abuse, and also charged a university official with neglecting to report allegations, media coverage linked the news to the Church’s failures to protect the innocent.
A Reuters story noted that “details of the case are similar to the sweeping scandals involving sexual abuse by priests the Catholic Church tried to keep hidden for decades.” The implication in that story and elsewhere was that Penn State, like the Church, set aside credible reports of criminal conduct to protect the institution from public embarrassment and financial repercussions.
But there’s another way to establish a connection between the Church’s struggle to protect minors and the Penn State crisis. The unstated link is that media reporting of the trauma endured by victims of clergy abuse has sensitized the entire culture to the devastating impact of such crimes, whether perpetrated by priests, coaches or parents.
That has not always been the case. Indeed, in the wake of the sexual revolution, the moral taboos and legal penalties established to prevent and punish such behavior have been challenged repeatedly — a campaign that rarely generated public attention.
In 1998, the Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association, provided “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples,” which argued that the “negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense.”
The study’s authors proposed that it was time to re-think the subject, and perhaps “a willing encounter with positive reactions” should be characterized as “simply adult-child sex.”
As Mary Eberstadt reported in a 2009 First Things article, “How Pedophilia Lost Its Cool,” the Psychological Bulletin study signaled that a reassessment of taboos against adult-child sex was under way in elite circles in the United States and abroad.
But as Eberstadt also noted, this trend — unlike many similar social currents that resulted in loosened restrictions on sexual conduct — soon lost traction.
Eberstadt wrote her article shortly after the celebrated filmmaker Roman Polanski successfully resisted extradition to the U.S. to face charges of child rape. While the director’s defenders in Europe and Hollywood criticized the effort to bring him to justice, the U.S. media generally opposed any attempt to let him off the hook.
The intensive coverage of the clergy abuse scandal had a lot to do with the reversal of a dangerous trend, in Eberstadt’s judgment. And today, Americans understand the damage caused by adult sexual predators. Institutions that ignore victims and protect the guilty must pay the penalty.
But there’s no time for complacency.
Just this fall, the BBC sci-fi drama Torchwood added a new character — a pedophile, played by Bill Pullman, the straight arrow once cast as the U.S. president in the blockbuster film Independence Day.
Pullman told a reporter that he was cast because the show’s producers believed a clean-cut predator would “destabilize viewers.”
A show that makes a pedophile likeable?
In the wake of coach Joe Paterno’s exit (as well as the university’s president), The Wall Street Journal noted with “relief” that “in a culture as libertine as ours at least some behavior — sexual exploitation of children — is still considered deviant.”
We must do our utmost to keep it that way.
From the Bloggers
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Filed under abuse, penn state, society
CommentsPost a CommentPosted by Ms. H on Sunday, Nov 13, 2011 11:52 AM (EDT):Excellent article, with a perspective about American sensitization about child sexual abuse I hadn’t considered before.
Point of order, from someone who’s been seeing this quote about Miracle Day going around: no matter what Bill Pullman believes about his performance, Oswald Danes was unequivocally a villain, and an entirely unsympathetic one. He was a clean-cut, respectable guy to make his pedophilia, among other things, more disturbing, not to push pedophilia towards being socially acceptable.
Posted by Ed on Sunday, Nov 13, 2011 1:18 PM (EDT):THE PENN STATE WAY: SUCCESS WITH SATAN
In March 2002, when Jerry Sandusky was abusing and molesting young boys, Penn State sponsored and hosted a Conference on Women’s Health and Wellness. Like many virtuous sounding names, e.g., The Second Mile Foundation, the true nature is far more sinister. Patrick Califia-Rice was the keynote speaker at Penn State’s Conference on Women’s Health and Wellness. Califia-Rice is an outspoken advocate of pedophilia and sadomasochism. She (apparently used to be a “he”) wrote books such as “Macho Sluts” and “Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex”. Most relevant to the exposure of sex abuse at Penn State is Califia-Rice’s philosophy, which, according to World Net Daily, NAMBLA posts on its website. Here is what the Keynote speaker at Penn State’s Conference believes.
“Boy-lovers and the lesbians who have young lovers are the
only people offering a hand to help young women and men
cross the difficult terrain between straight society and the
gay community. They are not child molesters. The child
abusers are priests, teachers, therapists, cops and parents
who force their stale morality onto the young people in
their custody. Instead of condemning pedophiles for their
involvement with lesbian and gay youth, we should be
supporting them.”
Califia-Rice was the keynote speaker at this Penn State Conference during the tenure of Penn State President Graham Spanier. Last week, of course, the Penn State Board of Trustees fired Spanier. Shockingly, this Conference was not an isolated event on President Spanier’s watch. To the contrary, it appears as if part of Penn State’s mission during President Spanier’s tenure was to promote and encourage all manner of depravity and immorality in the name of academic freedom and free speech. In Feb. 2001, Penn State’s Womyn’s Concerns hosted a “Sex Faire”. This taxpayer funded event included games such as “pin the clitoris on the vulva” and “orgasmo bingo”. It also included a “Tent of Consent” where students were allowed to engage in any behavior they desired. World Net Daily reports other events.
At this time, then Pennsylvania State Representative John Lawless tried to stop these sort of events at Penn State. Not surprisingly, Rep. Lawless objected to Pennsylvania taxpayers funding such events. The Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee held a hearing. At the hearing, Penn State President Graham Spanier said he would not stop such events because Penn State was committed to free speech. When asked if the programs were wrong or immoral, Spanier said “It depends on what your definition of immoral is.”
In the end, Rep. Lawless sadly reported that “You can’t touch Penn State. * * * Football is more important than education and morals.”
Put simply, Penn State supported and sponsored the exact activities that the university now says it finds objectionable and repulsive. President Spanier once testified that those activities were protected free speech. The university’s current about-face is not credible.
The inevitable comparisons to the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal are not unwarranted. The real comparison, however, is missed on many. According to Michael Rose’s “Goodbye, Good Men”, the Catholic
Church’s clergy sex abuse problem involved deviation from true Catholic doctrine by those in the Church who opposed Catholic teaching on homosexuality, priestly celibacy, female ordination, and related issues. The result was that men who were wholly unfit for the priesthood became priests. Worse, they sinfully pursued their heretical (and deviant) beliefs on these topics. When the clergy sex abuse issue exploded, these same people shockingly claimed the molestation of young boys actually supported their heretical positions on homosexuality, priestly celibacy and female ordination. The reverse was true—the sex abuse scandal was irrefutable evidence that the Church should strictly apply the standards it always had used when ordaining fit men for the clergy.
The Penn State situation is similar because Penn State, under President Spanier, was like those who argued the sex scandal was proof the Catholic Church needed to support homosexual conduct, eliminate priestly celibacy, and ordain females. In particular, Penn State, in the name of free speech, gave a forum to people who believe pedophiles are “not child molesters” and that “nstead of condemning pedophiles for their involvement with lesbian and gay youth, we should be supporting them.”
In June 1972, Pope Paul VI said “the smoke of Satan has entered the Church”. Penn State is aflame in the fires of Hell.
Posted by Jean Ross on Sunday, Nov 13, 2011 5:56 PM (EDT):I wonder if Penn State fans or football fans in general will no longer go to college football games, sell their season tickets and not allow their children to be around a “coach” any longer? Whereas some Catholics, when the church’s problems came to light, left the Church, assumed all Priests were pedophiles, and slam the Church every chance they can. We need to pray for all involved in this crime against our children.
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