Spain has approved a plan aimed at making reparation and economic compensation for victims of sex abuse committed by people connected to the Catholic Church.
There’s also the historical issue where gay people were sent to the church to “hide” the fact that they were gay. Basically, if you were of marrying age and hadn’t taken a bride, people would begin to ask questions.
Sure, at first you can handwave it away. But eventually, your neighbors get suspicious. After all, this is a time when virtually everyone pairs off and gets married. If you aren’t married, it’s either because something is wrong with you, or you’re choosing not to take a bride. And in an age where being gay would turn you into an exile (at best) or just straight up get you killed, you definitely didn’t want the neighbors to get suspicious. There’s also the shame it may bring to your family if you’re outed as gay.
So instead, the church offers a nice shiny excuse for why you haven’t taken a bride. You’re joining the clergy, and becoming a man of God. No more questions asked about your lack of a wife. But this meant that the church was bursting at the seams with a bunch of sexually repressed gay people. They definitely couldn’t talk to each other about it, because (again) that’d get you stoned to death. So instead, you have a bunch of priests taking their frustrations out on the helpless altar boys under their care.
And when that altar boy eventually speaks out about the abuse, your higher ups have a vested interest in covering it up. Because they’re gay and sexually repressed too, and also likely abused (or were culpable in the abuse of) altar boys in the past. And so your higher ups will just continue stacking that house of cards higher and higher, to try and avoid any suspicion landing on themselves when the people they abused come forward.
This isn’t to play into the “gays=perverts” talking point that right wing media loves to parrot. But it is an important bit of context into why so many priests ended up being abusers. They were basically a bunch of horny gay guys who had constantly been told that their feelings were shameful and they should repent for them. So they buried those feelings until they festered, and then they ended up acting out on the nearest helpless victims they found.
I think you missed the point of my last paragraph. It’s not about whether or not they’re gay. You sexually repress anyone hard enough, and they’ll start acting out in immoral ways. After all, if you’ve always been told that your natural feelings are immoral, then why not act immorally in other ways too? I’m sure there was also a lot of self-hatred too, in the same way that some of the loudest bigots are closeted. The kids weren’t abused because they were boys; They were abused because they were convenient targets who could be easily silenced.
Yes, but you prefaced that with a long story about why there were so many gay men as priests. If it had nothing to do with gay men, just people in general, why did you think it was relevant to say there were a ton of gay priests?
The point is that it doesn’t matter if they were gay. Straight priests were also sexually repressed by the church. It’s the sexual repression that matters, not the sexual identity of the person. But you led up to your conclusion with a big story about gay people, which implies that gay people were somehow more inclined to acting out on repression than straight people.
There’s also the historical issue where gay people were sent to the church to “hide” the fact that they were gay. Basically, if you were of marrying age and hadn’t taken a bride, people would begin to ask questions.
Sure, at first you can handwave it away. But eventually, your neighbors get suspicious. After all, this is a time when virtually everyone pairs off and gets married. If you aren’t married, it’s either because something is wrong with you, or you’re choosing not to take a bride. And in an age where being gay would turn you into an exile (at best) or just straight up get you killed, you definitely didn’t want the neighbors to get suspicious. There’s also the shame it may bring to your family if you’re outed as gay.
So instead, the church offers a nice shiny excuse for why you haven’t taken a bride. You’re joining the clergy, and becoming a man of God. No more questions asked about your lack of a wife. But this meant that the church was bursting at the seams with a bunch of sexually repressed gay people. They definitely couldn’t talk to each other about it, because (again) that’d get you stoned to death. So instead, you have a bunch of priests taking their frustrations out on the helpless altar boys under their care.
And when that altar boy eventually speaks out about the abuse, your higher ups have a vested interest in covering it up. Because they’re gay and sexually repressed too, and also likely abused (or were culpable in the abuse of) altar boys in the past. And so your higher ups will just continue stacking that house of cards higher and higher, to try and avoid any suspicion landing on themselves when the people they abused come forward.
This isn’t to play into the “gays=perverts” talking point that right wing media loves to parrot. But it is an important bit of context into why so many priests ended up being abusers. They were basically a bunch of horny gay guys who had constantly been told that their feelings were shameful and they should repent for them. So they buried those feelings until they festered, and then they ended up acting out on the nearest helpless victims they found.
I mean… it kind of is?
Gay men are not attracted to children, they are attracted to other men. Even if they’re closeted.
Pedophiles are attracted to children.
So you think that if you put a bunch of gay men in an environment where they can’t have sex then they’ll turn to sexually abusing children?
I think you missed the point of my last paragraph. It’s not about whether or not they’re gay. You sexually repress anyone hard enough, and they’ll start acting out in immoral ways. After all, if you’ve always been told that your natural feelings are immoral, then why not act immorally in other ways too? I’m sure there was also a lot of self-hatred too, in the same way that some of the loudest bigots are closeted. The kids weren’t abused because they were boys; They were abused because they were convenient targets who could be easily silenced.
Yes, but you prefaced that with a long story about why there were so many gay men as priests. If it had nothing to do with gay men, just people in general, why did you think it was relevant to say there were a ton of gay priests?
Because the gay men were part of the church specifically because they were gay, and were sexually repressed by the very same institution.
The point is that it doesn’t matter if they were gay. Straight priests were also sexually repressed by the church. It’s the sexual repression that matters, not the sexual identity of the person. But you led up to your conclusion with a big story about gay people, which implies that gay people were somehow more inclined to acting out on repression than straight people.