Catholic League president Donohue: Priests aren’t pedophiles, molesting children is ‘what gays do’

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Catholic League president: Priests aren’t pedophiles, molesting children is ‘what gays do’

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 -- 11:35 pm



http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0406/catholic-league-president-classifies-priests-raping-children-homosexuality/

In another coup for the seemingly part-time political pundit Bill Donohue, CNN broadcast on Tuesday a conversation about the Catholic church's thousands of pedophilia scandals that would be awkward to even over-hear in public, let alone broadcast nation-wide.

That's because Donohue, who presides over the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, decided to take the matter of a 14-year-old's sexual abuse to a level of technicality where none of his fellow contributors really cared to tread.

Objecting to the term "pedophilia" being used to describe the rampant claims of children being sexually abused by priests and nuns, Donohue instead called the acts "homosexuality," later suggesting "that's what gays do."

Though repeatedly cited in the media as the Catholic Church's "pedophilia" problem, Donohue instead prefers a longer term, according to his editorial published by CNN on March 19: "the sexual molestation of minors."

And, actually, the two terms are not mutually exclusive, explains the psychology department at UC Davis, noting that "pedophilia" as used to describe the church's scandals "can cause confusion."

"Whereas pedophilia and hebephilia refer to psychological propensities, child molestation and child sexual abuse are used to describe actual sexual contact between an adult and someone who has not reached the legal age of consent," they explain. "In this context, the latter individual is referred to as a child, even though he or she may be a teenager."

What Donohue is saying is that the priests who carried out such horrendous offenses against children did not have a psychological fixation on children: they were simply attracted to people of the same sex, and that's just what homosexuals do. His own bar for limiting use of the term "pedophilia," according to his CNN interview, is, "I dunno, 12, 13 years of age?"