Thursday April 15, 2010

IT'S A FAIR COP. BUT SOCIETY'S TO BLAME!

You know I'm the last person to want to cut the Catholic Church any slack over clerical child sex abuse.

Says Rod Dreher. Yes, that Rod Dreher.

But it must be said, especially these days, that it's not only Catholic bishops who have failed to halt the sexualization of children. We are all complicit. As awful as the Catholic bishops have been on protecting kids, children would be far better off in a culture run by the moral convictions doctrines of the Catholic bishops than the one we have, run by the moral convictions doctrines of commercial interests.

If only we had the theocracy Dreher desires, priests would stop raping little boys.

Oh, wait, it gets better:

As awful as the 1950s church was, with abuse of children going on behind a veil of sacred secrecy, is it really true that kids back then were worse off than kids today, in terms of the moral environment?

You know, he's got a point. Even if your little boy was caught by one of the chickenhawk priests and fucked in the ass, he still wouldn't have heard a single rap record.

Better still, the update: After the expected, "Don't you n00bs know I was personally agonized over this thing, and that trumps any number of tore-up little-boy anuses?*" he gets to the money shot:

We sexualize our children, then are shocked, shocked when people treat them like sexual objects.

Why he didn't just call the post "Whores! You're all Whores of Babylon!" I'll never know.

(* Not a direct quote.)

UPDATE. Commenter Aaron Baker correctly points out the similar and similarly idiotic argument of Ross Douthat, ably plunked by Henry Farrell here. The Right's Catholics and Catholics Emeritae are accustomed to pin all sex crimes on Dirty Fucking Hippies. And they don't bother to change strategies when the fault obviously lies closer to home. Infallibility will do that for you.