Informant38

"The rights of children and indeed of the community demand that we support family life by protecting the definition of marriage."
Any redefinition of marriage must be seen as an attack on the common good," he said. "The weakening of the institution of marriage has already had too high a social cost. Radically redefining marriage will simply serve to intensify the assault on marriage and the American family."
�Most Reverend Sean Patrick O'Malley, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Boston, whose first months as archbishop have been consumed with settling the claims of hundreds who say they were sexually abused by priests, was vehement in yesterday's speech that neither the church nor the government should tamper with the institution of marriage.
�Yvonne Abraham/Boston Globe 10.03.03

Ω{"...settling the claims of..."
These guys still own the world.
Settling the claims of hundreds "who say".
The Archbishop could walk on his knees until the bones showed through and it wouldn't be enough. There is no settlement possible. Most of the victims are dead already, or damaged beyond therapeutic repair, yet the entire issue is framed exclusively in the language of commerce.
My lawn was damaged by your son, Excellency, and it's going to cost at least $10,000 to repair, though I might be willing to settle for $7,500.
The depth of corruption, and, for the extent of its harm, evil, in this is complete, total, immeasurable. It goes all the way. There is no trace of God in anything this man says or does, the only grace and light in evidence comes from the pitiful lingering hopes of people who have been conned into wasting what metaphysical connection they had to begin with on gold-plated shit.}
ΩΩ{and furthermore: the damage wasn't caused by sex. I'm not saying the people involved were damaged because some priest had sex with them. Sex is the least of it, it's power. And the spiritual violation, the edifice of the church itself in the mind of a child, that awesome majesty with its finger up your ass. That level of violation. Sex is intimate, sex is profoundly a part of who and what we are, but the evil there isn't evil because it's sexual, it's evil taking a sexual form. It's like with slavery, how they've convinced everyone it's a racist thing, as though slavery is only wrong because it's racist.
It's the violation and the damage that makes what these priests did wrong, the sex is incidental to the crime itself.
And as far as the topic of O'Malley's rap goes, gay marriage as a political point of debate is ludicrous. Worse. Because debating it legitimizes the social framework in which the debate, in which the marriage takes place.
That's how this thing survives, that's why these asinine bones of contention are still thrown into the kennel. They worked Galileo over hard, then forgave him, sort of. And then much later somehow accepted the truth of what he said, without ever having to backtrack and cop to their errors. And I don't just mean the Catholic Church. The whole thing here.
Yes voting is important, yes gays should have the same partnership options as heterosexuals, yes to all the above. As long as everybody can hold on to the idea of kids, of coming generations, of the future as being more important than now.
And that's where it starts breaking down isn't it?
Because the plan is that it stops there. We'll kick the shit out of you for a hundred and twenty hours straight, and then we'll stop, and then you'll thank us for stopping, and then we'll all go back to our jobs. OK?}