Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Ray Comfort defends Mormon Fundamentalists, accuses me of justifying pedophilia!

Well, it looks like Ray Comfort is engaging in a little bit of Catholic Bashing in his blog. He's saying that there is a double standard with reguards to the way the Catholic Church is being treated by the FBI with reguards to past sexual abuse scandals, and the way the Mormon Fundamentalists in Texas are being dealt with currently with their sex abuse scandal. Appartently Ray is ignoring the details, as usual. There is a huge difference between the two scandals, and Ray doesn't seem to understand what the difference is.

I Responded:

Oh, dear, I don't know where to begin, Ray, but you are so misinformed that it's not funny!

I live in Boston Mass, which is the epicenter of the clergy abuse scandal. The difference between what happened in Texas and what happened here with reguards to the Catholic church is that the abuse in Texas was CURRENTLY HAPPENING, and the victim called up and said "I'm being abused right now, and so aren't others."

In Boston, it wasn't until 20 and sometimes 30 years after the abuse happened that the victims came forth and accused people of molesting them. Almost no people in Boston called the cops and said "help, I'm being sexually abused right now". They kept it to themselves, and some had to go to years of therapy before they were able to come forth.

That's a pretty big difference right there.

The Church did not inform authorities when the abuse was discovered. They dealt with it in their own way -- and it was indeed a stupid way -- by moving the offending priests to different parts of the country, and tried to forget about it, then the abuse started up again, and the cycle continued. The church, in many cases, payed the families of the victims to remain silent and gave them what therapy they could, with the understanding that this would be kept within the church.

When individual priests were named and given to the authorities, and charges pressed, some priests were extridited back to Massachusetts to stand trial. Several of them went to prison.

No large FBI raid was neccesary, because no people were currently in the process of being abused. It was all about things that occurred 20 years ago or more. Furthermore, the church authorities totally cooperated with the police when they asked.

In Texas, by contrast, like I said, the abuse was current, and someone asked for help now. Since over 40 alleged victims were involved, the police by law, needed to protect them. When the police went to the Texas cult compound (I don't think you believe they were a legitimate church, Ray, but correct me if I'm wrong), they did not cooperate. They resisted told the cops to go away.

That is when the FBI had to come and get the kids out of there.

Don't try to bring up memories of Waco, either. The CULT in Waco (please do not argue that the Branch Davidians were not a cult) was raided for the exact same reasons. Former members who left tipped off the FBI that children were being raped by David Koresh himself.

See, former members of the Branch Davidians, even members who still believe in David Koresh, admitted to police that David Koresh had all the married couples split up within the cult, and that David Koresh had sex with pretty much all the women, and that no other men in the cult could have sex. Then he started taking 12-year-olds to bed with him, and some surviving cult members still believe that that was okay -- because they believed he was Jesus, and that anything he did was okay.

There simply is no comparison between what happened in Texas and what happend with the Catholic Church in their sexual abuse scandal. The Catholic abuse was in the past with no victims needing to be rescued, and the church cooperated with authorities. In Texas, the Mormon Fundamentalists did not cooperate, and the abuse was going in currently, with people asking for help now.

How you can claim there is a double standard, and that Catholics are somehow being given better treatment is simply your own disreguard for the details, which seems to be the main issue you have with many things -- those annoying, pesky, and boring details.

But get this,

Ray's response was to accuse me of "justifying pedophilia"!!!! Can you beleive it?



Read it yourself...

Ray Comfort wrote:
"David...I shouldn't be amazed that you would attempt to justify pedophilia. Unbelievable."


Ray, Are you trying to be funny?

I don't understand how anyone who can read and write the English language would interpret what I wrote as "justifying pedophilia". If you actually read what I wrote, it is clear that I was trying to tell you that there is no double standard, because the DETAILS of each crime are so completely different that they had to be handled differently -- and were.

I find it unbelievable that anyone with at least a 6th grade understanding of English would read what I wrote and conclude what you thought. I really think you need to read the whole post, and not "skim" though it.

1 comment:

David W. Irish said...

I think that this incident, combined with all the other things I've seen, heard, and read from Ray Comfort, pretty much proves to anyone that Ray Comfort is an idiot -- a classic "proud to be ignorant" Fundamentalist who has zero integrity.