Bill Donohue, apologist for Irish clergy abuse

This was predictable, Bill Donohue coming to the defense of the Catholic Church over the Irish report on systemic abuse in Catholic institutions. Here’s the full text of his release [emphasis added]:

HYSTERIA OVER IRISH CLERGY ABUSE

May 20, 2009

After nine years of investigation, Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has published its findings. More than 30,000 children, most of them delinquents, passed through one or more of Ireland’s Catholic-run institutions from the 1920s through the 1980s.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the report today:

Reuters is reporting that “Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children,” yet the report does not justify this wild and irresponsible claim. Four types of abuse are noted: physical, sexual, neglect and emotional. Physical abuse includes “being kicked”; neglect includes “inadequate heating”; and emotional abuse includes “lack of attachment and affection.” Not nice, to be sure, but hardly draconian, especially given the time line: fully 82 percent of the incidents took place before 1970. As the New York Times noted, “many of them [are] now more than 70 years old.” And quite frankly, corporal punishment was not exactly unknown in many homes during these times, and this is doubly true when dealing with miscreants.

Regarding sexual abuse, “kissing,” and “non-contact including voyeurism” (e.g., what it labels as “inappropriate sexual talk”) make the grade as constituting sexual abuse. Moreover, one-third of the cases involved “inappropriate fondling and contact.” None of this is defensible, but none of it qualifies as rape. Rape, on the other hand, constituted 12 percent of the cases. As for the charge that “Irish Priests” were responsible, some of the abuse was carried out by lay persons, much of it was done by Brothers, and about 12 percent of the abusers were priests (most of whom were not rapists).

The Irish report suffers from conflating minor instances of abuse with serious ones, thus demeaning the latter. When most people hear of the term abuse, they do not think about being slapped, being chilly, being ignored or, for that matter, having someone stare at you in the shower. They think about rape.

By cheapening rape, the report demeans the big victims. But, of course, there is a huge market for such distortions, especially when the accused is the Catholic Church.

Is there no crime so heinous that these people will not stand up for each other over?

[Edit: Here are just a couple articles that go into further detail, from vjack and PZ.]

Bill C-311 – Hopefully it will make the Conservatives permanently un-electable

The funny thing is, up until a few years ago, I was always a small-c conservative, and I’m still generally a fiscal conservative. But the current crop of conservatives in North America have me so enraged with both the Republican Fascist Party (that’s my new name for them) and Canada’s Neo-Con Party (led by George Bush’s lap dog, Stephen Harper) that I hope for the permanent demise of both parties.

It seems inevitable that, at least in some way, my dream is going to come true south of the border. The Republican Party is (probably) smart enough to realize that they’ll never win another election until they distance themselves from the extremist American Taliban and KKKhristian factions. I really do hope the racist, ignorant, homophobic anti-science, apocalyptic theocrats spend the next 40 years “wandering in the desert” without a political voice (or secede and become the Mexican State of “Tay-has”). The “moderate” Republicans will just pin the whole global warming denial thing on the Jesus Freaks, and move on.

Canada’s a completely different story. We have a Conservative government, who seem to have learned all their tricks from Dubya, Darth Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Phil Gramm and friends. They don’t believe in evolution, and they don’t believe in global warming. Their only reading material seems to come from Republican think tanks and they’ve already started their “elitist” attack ads and we aren’t even in an election campaign. Unfortunately, there’s no internal rift to hope will explode.

It’s the climate change issue that I think has the best potential to destroy the party and end neo-conservatism in North America forever. Recently, Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, passed first reading, since we have a minority government and the majority of our MPs actually have principles. Every single Conservative MP voted against the bill.

But things have changed quickly, I think. The public support for action on global warming has recently become overwhelming. The Conservatives will have to do the biggest flip-flop in history or risk losing support everywhere but our oil-producing areas. It is a given to me that most people in the oil business will continue to deny global warming as long as it is in their narrow short-term self-interest, regardless of future consequences. But the rest of Canada has caught on, and I hope they punish the Conservatives severely for putting short-term financial gain against the future of humanity.

BTW, a word on “flip-flopping”, before I finish. Everyone, including the media, seems to treat changing your mind as one of the worst things a politician can do, even worse than lying. Personally, I respect when someone looks at the situation in depth and says, “I was wrong.” Breaking campaign “promises” is not much different, we all know that party platforms are based on what the party thinks has the best chance of getting them elected. Once they get in power, a good politician will do what he has to do, regardless of his ideology. That’s the problem with the Conservatives, they will never let evidence get in the way of their ideology, and that’s what makes them bad for the country.

Conservatism: Where the rich get a free ride; where programs that I don’t need are wasteful; where regulations that get in the way of me making more money are evil; where liberty means I get to do the torturing to justify illegal wars and where freedom of speech means I get to push my religion in your face but everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi, a socialist, a fascist, a communist or just plain unpatriotic. In other words, it’s all about me.

Today’s Republicans

Apologists for torture; apologists for bigots, homophobes and hate criminals; apologists for global climate disaster; apologists for any and all forms of wrongdoing by religious officials; actively working to destroy public education and reduce America’s competitiveness.

Yet even more ignorance, misinformation, distortion, and lies from global warming deniers

A classic tactic the deniers use is “I haven’t seen any research that shows…”

Take Michele Bachmann’s mind-numbingly stupid “There’s not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is harmful, it’s natural, it’s only 3% of the atmosphere” rant (I know those are not her exact words, but YOU know that was the message) . It’s so appallingly stupid, I’ll let others address it.

I’ve been accused by a commenter of hating people who disagree with me, but to be more accurate, I agree (to some degree) with Alonzo that global warming denialism is evil because of the devastating impact it will have on future generations, including my descendants and those of so many people whose lives will be ruined because anti-regulation free-market capitalists want to make more money today.

Here’s a story about a climate change denier organization’s own scientists accepting the global warming science, in 1995!!!

Ok, to those who claim to never have seen the research, I’ll do your homework for you. Google “global warming research”. For me, the #1 hit was the Stanford Solar Centre. Page down to the FAQ’s, and follow some of the links.

Beware, the real research gets very technical, very fast. For the non-scientist, like me, I let the experts figure it out. This gets back to my original post – on one side, we have almost every credible climate scientist on the planet, and on the other, we have James Inhofe’s debunked list of economists, TV weathermen, dead people and people who even objected to being on his list. Before you give both sides a chance to express themselves, you have to decide if both sides are credible, and the deniers flatly are not credible, for reasons that I addressed in my original post.

Anyway, believe what you want, because I think the tide has turned and you are now on the wrong side, just like you (or at least many of your fellow global warming deniers) are wrong about evolution, gay rights, vaccinations and crimes against humanity (torture and starting illegal wars). Don’t feel bad if you’ve fallen for it all, the Republican lie machine is a very powerful force of malevolent hatred, all designed to manipulate ignorant, bigoted people into keeping them in power.

I don’t need to re-hash everything, if you want my general opinion on issues, read my shared items from the blogs that I read.

And remember, I’m not here for readers and I don’t want to get into arguments in the comments. My comment section is for respectful, intelligent discussion. I’ll discuss any issues, but “I haven’t seen any research” is no longer good enough.