Three years later, Catholic church strips child porn consumer Lahey of his Bishop rank

If there’s one thing about the Catholic Church I absolutely love, it’s how timely their justice is. Three years after being convicted of caught red-handed importing child pornography, former Bishop Raymond Lahey of Antigonish, NS, has been stripped of his bishophood and dismissed from the clerical state in “one of the most serious penalties that the Roman Catholic Church can impose”, according to his former Diocese.

The decision means Lahey, a former bishop of Antigonish, can no longer work as a cleric nor preside at any religious services or sacraments.

“This decision reminds all of us of the serious harms that come from all forms of pornography, especially child pornography,” Antigonish Bishop Brian Joseph Dunn said in a statement.

“It also means that this action concludes both the criminal and canonical processes that are connected with this matter.”

Emphasis mine. I guess we’re lucky they didn’t also try to implicate Teh Gay Menace at the same time somehow!
Continue reading “Three years later, Catholic church strips child porn consumer Lahey of his Bishop rank”

Three years later, Catholic church strips child porn consumer Lahey of his Bishop rank
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Pastor claims he was just joking about child abuse! Sort of.

The pastor from yesterday’s post who advocated hitting male children who “act effeminately”, or female kids who “act butch”, has notpologized.

Via Good As You, via FayObserver.com:

A Fayetteville pastor says he was joking when he told parents in a sermon Sunday to hit children who show signs of being gay.

Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church on Glensford Drive, said he does not advocate hitting children and wishes he could take back a remark encouraging fathers to punch boys who act effeminately.

But he defended his belief in the need to reinforce traditional gender roles in children.

“If I had to say it again, I would say it differently, no doubt,” Harris said Tuesday. “Those weren’t planned words, but what I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly. I’m not going to compromise on that.”

So if he had to say it again, he’d lose all the “beat the tar out of your kids” but not the “punish them for not conforming with traditional gender roles” bullshit. As though that’s anything approximating contrition for such a terrible sentiment — it’s apologizing for the violent rhetoric, but not for the complete douche move of demanding that males be “masculine” and females be “feminine” on penalty of punishment of some sort or another. Even if that punishment is of the imaginary sort, like “don’t do that or you’ll be sent to hell after you die”, that’s still applying societal pressure against whole swathes of people who just want to be themselves. So I guess that “special dispensation” to “man up” when your kids have been so sinful as to like things has been revoked, huh?

You are an insufferable, judgmental, sanctimonious asshole, Sean. And you claim to be a moral authority. Only religion could build into you such an immunity to empathy.

Pastor claims he was just joking about child abuse! Sort of.

#Kony: It’s Complicated

We’ve all seen Invisible Children’s “Make Him Famous” campaign, attempting to bring war criminal Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, to justice. If you somehow missed it, here’s the video again.

However, the situation is far more complicated than the video makes it appear, and I can’t help but feel that for everything this video does that’s right, there’s two more things wrong.
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#Kony: It’s Complicated

Scicurious and Kate Clancy destroy the “deep-thinking hebephile”

Well, what was left of him after Stephanie provided the science that shows that practicing hebephiles actually do, demonstrably, harm the children they victimize, anyway. (Yes, I’m late to this game too. The blogosphere is a busy place and, like I said recently, I’m playing catch-up right now.)

Jesse Bering of Bering In Mind made several mistakes in tackling the subject of hebephilia as presented by a reader. He took a number of things at face value, and did not delve deeper into the quandry presented regarding sexual “moral panics” and whether there’s any good reason to excoriate this writer despite his seeming attempt at honest discourse. There were many red flags in the original letter, and Bering missed them and did not take the opportunity to interrogate those red flags, and for that he got raked over the proverbial coals by the blogosphere. Bering wrote an addendum, which did much to provide us with a mea culpa and put the focus back on the letter-writer and the topic at hand. Which is good, because there were many, MANY loose threads in said letter left by Bering in his original coverage, which really needed to be tugged at. And Bering’s addendum, too, needed further interrogation.
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Scicurious and Kate Clancy destroy the “deep-thinking hebephile”