Israel Folau - HIGHEST PAID PLAYER in the AFL. What a joke.

[mxett]

Mate ive tried to explain a concept a 6 year old child could grasp in about 30 seconds

You are either being deliberately dense or you dont have a choice

If you genuinely dont have a choice in the matter i apologise

I'm trying to make a point that it's not as clear cut as you're making out, and for you this seems to trigger a derogatory response. It's only a discussion, there's no need for that

 

[Strange Cat]

He signed up with an employer which has a certain set of consistent, inclusive values. He breached those agreed employee expectations several times. He posed increased risk to promotional efforts and client retention.

It is that simple. If you decide to work for an organisation, don't conflict with its values in a manner that undermines organisational objectives.

Just like with QUIT australia they have a policy of having no smokers...it would make sense as an employee not to promote or engage in smoking

Common sense really, something Folau lacks clearly

 

[Strange Cat]

This was disputed vigorously by a friend from Perth, but yeah WA seems to be a bit over represented in the hatey posting stakes.

Must be the high England migrants rate

 

[HARKER]

Organisational governance frameworks & recurrent instances of in-breach published social media posts is all the transparency facts you need to make a reasonable assessment of the incident. Whether or not someone is in Folau's ear is speculative, but the reasons for his dismissal are all process.

It's reasonable to you, but clearly not reasonable to Folau, given what he knows to be true (and he is a lot closer to it than you and I) and his team of lawyers who are taking this all the way. Well, maybe all the way or RU may yet come to an 'amicable settlement'

Who may be in Rugby Unions ear? Is it possible that a premium sponsor has laid out the deal on the table to RU and forcing their hand and if so, what does this mean in the grander scheme of things? You see we're all slaves to the wants of others and with this, everyone is at risk. This is the war that some are taking up for Folau.

By the way, I'm not fighting for Folau at all.
He's either a dickhead for having the 'urge and need' to declare his moral/religious viewpoint in a way that's likely to be offend (as we all now just how much of a crime it is to offend anything and anyone these days) or a genius for devising the plan he has for a grander idea that's not apparent to us yet.
I'd side on the former, but I don't know for sure.

 

[Roobs321]

It's reasonable to you, but clearly not reasonable to Folau, given what he knows to be true (and he is a lot closer to it than you and I) and his team of lawyers who are taking this all the way. Well, maybe all the way or RU may yet come to an 'amicable settlement'

Who may be in Rugby Unions ear? Is it possible that a premium sponsor has laid out the deal on the table to RU and forcing their hand and if so, what does this mean in the grander scheme of things? You see we're all slaves to the wants of others and with this, everyone is at risk. This is the war that some are taking up for Folau.

By the way, I'm not fighting for Folau at all.
He's either a dickhead for having the 'urge and need' to declare his moral/religious viewpoint in a way that's likely to be offend (as we all now just how much of a crime it is to offend anything and anyone these days) or a genius for devising the plan he has for a grander idea that's not apparent to us yet.
I'd side on the former, but I don't know for sure.

It's not really about me, I just don't see how he has any ground to stand on. If you are managing an organisation in which an employee has been warned not to harm the organisation, and continues to do so, demonstrating ongoing disregard despite intervention procedures, then you have to dismiss that employee. These situations are never easy to manage for all involved, and as a highly skilled worker results in some lost competitive advantage, but such conduct calls for such a separation as it undermines organisational efforts within a highly competitive football code market. It is no more than that. You'd expect nothing less for any other employee repeatedly breaching code of conduct.

 

[mxett]

It's not really about me, I just don't see how he has any ground to stand on. If you are managing an organisation in which an employee has been warned not to harm the organisation, and continues to do so, demonstrating ongoing disregard despite intervention procedures, then you have to dismiss that employee. These situations are never easy to manage for all involved, but such conduct calls for such a separation. It is no more than that. You'd expect nothing less for any other employee repeatedly breaching code of conduct.

I suppose the issue is the precedent. Will this give employers the right to warn and then terminate employees for their religious or other activities outside of work?

 

[The Falcon Strike]

I disagree. Saying someone is going to hell (a well-known concept) is like saying someone is going to a place worse than prison. And that they were born to that fate. Legally it might be different to claiming they should be stoned or denied human rights, but as an expression saying a group of people is going to hell is a loaded comment.

I’ll give you a choice - go to Hell or go to prison .

Which do you choose ?

 

[The Falcon Strike]

The Falcon Strike this was unkind of me.

It's just that if this isn't a form of vilification of a minority group, then what is?

Apology is fine - but not needed - I don’t get offended easily - certainly not over small s**t

Vilification you say?

How about gay bashing, how about denying jobs, how about refusing access to venues, how about just about anything that is actually real

The premise that Hell is real is farcical to be offended by when actual meaningful vilification goes on

I get that it’s not “nice”

 

[Roobs321]

I’ll give you a choice - go to Hell or go to prison .

Which do you choose ?

Folau would definitely rather go to prison than hell. Many of the people he condemns in his posts are of religious backgrounds.

 

[mxett]

Folau would definitely rather go to prison than hell. Many of the people he condemns in his posts are of religious backgrounds.

therefore they would already know the relevant scriptures and either disagree with his interpretation or at least understand what his comment was based on

 

[Crankitup]

No, your just out of touch with reality.

Says the guy who can't spell and calls himself Slartibartfast.

 

[Crankitup]

Many gays, who????
Where do you get your info??
Your making this up as you go along .

The quote from the first one is long so I'll put this example in a post by itself. More examples will follow.

(1) Karla Mantilla (Lesbian Feminist Author) -

The religious right's recent media blitz about how gay people can change comes as no surprise to me. Partly that's because I have a long commute and so listen to a religious right radio station to keep abreast of their thinking. And partly it's because I have long thought the strategy used by the gay rights movement of saying that it's biological is incredibly lame. In a strange way I agree with the religious right. Of course it's a choice--how could it not be? We make decisions (constrained choices, but choices nevertheless) about everything else in our lives--where we want to live, what we like to eat, how to dress. So we cannot make a decision about who we are lovers with? Of course we do. If that's what it takes to be a lesbian, then all women are lesbians When I was coming out I went briefly to a support group for women coming out of marriage. At one point I asked, "How do you know you're a lesbian?" One woman answered that she had never felt emotionally close to men and that she always could talk better with women. Another chimed in, saying she too had felt that way, that she could only be emotionally open with women. The rest nodded in agreement.

What's wrong with this picture? Practically all women feel that way. Every straight woman I have ever known has felt more comfortable confiding in her girlfriends, felt closer to them, felt more understood by and able to open up to women. If that's what it takes to be a lesbian, then all women are lesbians. The age-old complaint of straight women is that their men don't talk to them, don't understand their feelings, and don't seem interested in what they are saying. One of the most common article topics in magazines like Ladies Home Journal and Woman's Day, is how to get your husband to open up and talk to you.
Clearly, if the reason these women felt they were lesbians was because they felt emotionally closer to women, then being a lesbian cannot be biological. First of all, since most women feel that way, we would have to say that most women are born lesbians and that can't be true (except perhaps on a theoretical level). Secondly, whether you feel emotionally close to someone does not seem likely to be biological: it seems much more plausible that it has something to do with the emotional and psychological characteristics of the person.

…that it was biological, appealed to them because it absolved them of guilt… When I replied to the group, "But all women feel closer to women," the conversation slammed to a halt. They were not going there. Instead, the line was, "my husband is a great guy, really he is, it's just that I'm a lesbian--that's why I have to leave him." Over time, it became clear to me that these women experienced tremendous guilt over leaving their husbands at a time when divorce is billed as the cause of all social ills. So the idea that they couldn't help being a lesbian, that it was biological, appealed to them because it absolved them of guilt, and of responsibility for their actions. When I tried to suggest that they were dissatisfied with the current state of relations between women and men, their husbands in particular, they could not think about it because that took away their special dispensation to feel less guilty about leaving their husbands--the dogma was they had to since they were lesbians. (Even conservative radio talk show "psychologist" Dr. Laura approves of gay people getting a divorce while allowing no other legitimate reason for divorce except extreme circumstances like battering or alcoholism.)


Biology as an explanation

Biology is evoked all the time to explain or justify human choices and social patterns. There is a long history of using biology to justify inequality as inevitable due to the genetic characteristics of women or people of color. In general, biological explanations serve to delude people into believing that they can't help their choices; that it can be no other way; that their actions are not borne out of human volition or choice but rather inborn inescapable drives. But while the idea that if gays can't help it because they are born that way seemingly might arrive at our acceptance into society, it also diminishes us as thinking purposeful beings.


Hunger may be biological, but eating M&Ms is a choice

Clearly, there is some biological element to sexuality, but it is limited to the generic desire for sex, in the same manner that hunger is biological which leads us to want to ingest food. But what we end up eating is as varied as human cultures are; what we are convinced is nourishing varies as well. And our gastronomical proclivities change over time too. In the United States, during the first part of the twentieth century, a healthy and nourishing diet was considered to be one which included plenty of meat and potatoes; only the poor ate beans and rice and greens. It has now flip-flopped almost completely, and the tony restaurants will serve rice and beans long before they will serve meat and potatoes (admittedly some obscure variety of bean and specially flavored rice) So while hunger itself, in its most basic state is biological, the means with which humans have acquired to sate it vary to a large extent.


Bagels vs. cow's blood

Yet, when we crave some food, we feel it is biological. It seems that our body cries out for bagels, perhaps. But if we were Maori tribespeople, our stomach would surely cry out not for bagels, but cow's blood. In a like manner with sexuality. I know someone who believes he was born to have a sexual penchant for wearing lacy silky women's underwear. But, come on, how could that be biological? Would some random Maori have a sexual fetish for underwear from Victoria's Secret any more than he might have a hankering for a bagel with cream cheese and lox? Clearly, however early in youth this man perceived his sexual proclivity beginning, there is no gene that codes for Victoria's Secret.

But how can people's experience be denied? If a gay man says that he was born that way, how can I deny his experience? First, no one can deny someone's experience, but people's interpretation of their experience is what is truly in debate. And I think people's interpretations, even about their own experience, can be and have been wrong. I had one friend who was born in Nicaragua and a very committed catholic. He told me that the reason he was so committed to catholicism was that he could tell that it was the true faith. I asked him if he didn't think perhaps growing up in a country where 95% of the population was catholic might have influenced his beliefs. Absolutely not, was his answer. I then asked him if he had been born and raised in Saudia Arabia, whether he would still see the truth of catholicism, and he was positively certain that, having been raised muslim, he would still have seen the truth of the catholic religion and changed his faith. I think he is wrong about his interpretation both about his religion (catholicism is not the one true religion) and his experience (of course he was influenced by his culture whether he was aware of it or not). People can and frequently do underestimate the influence of their culture on their own beliefs and tastes. So just because people think they were born a certain way, that is they were that way ever since they can remember, this does not mean it is true. And I also do not agree with the increasingly popular compromise position that maybe for some people it's biological and for others it's not. I see no convincing evidence or plausible explanations that it is biological for anyone, I only see that some people feel they know what its etiology is.

Finally, why do we think that individual people have more insight into their own genetic make-up than science has? Just because something feels fundamental to a person, does that make her an authority on her genetic structure, able to authoritatively interpret her feelings as having biological roots? I think not.
In a strange way, the christian fundamentalists have this right--they believe homosexuality is a choice people make and that people can choose another way to live. I cannot conceive of rationally arguing otherwise. Of course any homosexual could choose tomorrow to reject homosexuality and attempt to find a partner of the opposite sex. But they don't want to, it would not feel right, they would be unhappy (why they think fundamentalists would care about the little detail of personal unhappiness only reflects their thorough misunderstanding of the fundamentalist project).

But this is the point. Homosexuals choose to be homosexuals because something about homosexuality appeals to them, they like it, they prefer it to heterosexuality. When this is attributed to biology, any further examination must stop there. Why do some people prefer same sex partnerships over opposite sex partnerships? What seems preferable about it to them? What don't they like about heterosexual relations? That is the rub right there. What if there are reasons that people reject heterosexuality and embrace same sex relations? What reasons would people have to prefer same sex relations over heterosexuality? Calling it biology does not allow us to even ask the questions.
The truth is, a lot of heterosexuals don't like heterosexual relations either. When Ellen came out on the Oprah Winfrey show, she said that she tried having sex with men, but something was missing, she just didn't feel something she hoped to feel. What was overlooked in the hubbub was Oprah's response: she responded, "A lot of heterosexual women feel the same way [about sex with men]," kind of under her breath and meant to be taken only as a funny complaint. But it is true that a lot of heterosexual women are deeply disappointed in heterosexual sex, or to their thinking, with sex. To wit, the great Ann Landers survey in which over 70% of women answered that they would prefer cuddling to "the act," a survey which was taken to mean that women don't like sex much. No one thought that it meant that these women don't like heterosexual sex as it is currently played out in the problematic gender relations between men and women.


They would be special rights for fundamentalists

The reason fundamentalists think homosexuals can change to heterosexuality is that they know people can force themselves to adapt to circumstances which they do not find particularly pleasurable. And so they resent the assertion by homosexuals that they must do what feels right; for fundamentalists, this is giving homosexuals special rights which they themselves do not have--doing what feels good or right for themselves is not something they do, after all. So there are millions of heterosexual women for whom sex does not feel right; they would prefer not to have it and only cuddle, but they do not follow their feelings and abstain from sex--they continue to have sex without liking it much or without getting that "special feeling' that they would like. This explains the romance novels which so many heterosexual housewives indulge themselves in--it is what they are lacking in their own lives. They dream of it, and yet console themselves that it is an impossibility and so settle for their husband.


That might explain lesbians, but what about gay men?

It is my suspicion that similar forces operate for gay men. They don't like being in heterosexual relationships perhaps because they rebel against the role that straight men must play to a woman counterpart. They find themselves dissatisfied --it seems uncomfortable--certainly too stoic and self-restrained. They prefer being more emotional, more spontaneous, more pleasure-seeking, so they conclude that they are gay, rather than critique the role of men in patriarchy. Of course I do not mean to characterize all gay men as being the same on this count; I only want to suggest one scenario in which preferring men might occur which comes out of problems with the expectations of being a straight male and not biology.

Reasons for women to be dissatisfied with heterosexuality

Unfortunately, rather than looking into what parts of sex heterosexual women don't like and what things they do like (ie., cuddling--does this mean they don't get enough affection to feel like sex?), many heterosexual women feel that they simply don't like sex. But what does "sex" mean? It can be can be many different things. Clearly sex between same sex partners is very different from sex between opposite-sex partners, enough so for sizeable segments of the population to exclusively prefer one or the other. Sex can be construed any way we choose--if we like more cuddling, then cuddling could be construed to be an integral part of sex. Sex does not have to be the heterosexually male model of sex--very little foreplay, cuddling, tenderness or caressing, followed by intercourse, followed by little or no talking. It could be entirely different. Sex between women, for example, involves a much longer time span than heterosexual sex, with more communication and expressions of affection.

The discontents of heterosexuality

So we have a situation where sizeable numbers of heterosexuals are dissatisfied either with sex or their heterosexual relationships or both, and yet think that "that's life," sex and relationships are just like that. And then we have a group of people who are also dissatisfied with heterosexual relations and think "I'm gay." The problem with the biological explanation is it does not allow people to seek to understand what precisely it is about heterosexual relations they did not like, what made them uncomfortable, what was unpleasant. Homosexuals in a way have an edge, because they are willing to have enough imagination to seek something better when they do not like (hetero) sex. But they don't have enough imagination to see that they are not alone in their dissatisfaction with heterosexual relations.

Conclusion

I think that using the biological explanation is a poor strategy for several reasons. First, it maintains the current social order (the way heterosexuality is socially constructed currently) as stable and only gives individual escape hatches to a small number of people. Calling it biology is a neat way of sidestepping any critique of patriarchy or gender relations by attributing rebellion against the current structure to biology rather than dissatisfaction. Secondly, it does not allow people to think very deeply about why they choose on thing or another and so helps maintain the status quo of heterosexual relations. If people could say, heterosexuality sucks, and that's why I'm gay, then we could begin to see more clearly that patriarchy sucks, that male-female gender relations suck, that marriage sucks, etc. Third, it inhibits agency among gay people. Rather than being responsible for and proud of our choices, it makes us seem we are helpless pawns reacting to our biology. Fourth, it keeps other who are dissatisfied with patriarchy or gender relations from making the choice to become gay. We ought to recruit--we don't have much of a movement if we restrict new members only to those "born" to be gay. And finally, it is an exceptionally inadequate defense against the religious rights assertions that we can change. We would do better to say of course we could change if we wanted to, but we don't want to, because it is better to be gay.

 

[Crankitup]

(2) Cynthia Nixon (of 'Sex & the City' fame) -

“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.”

“Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”

 

[Crankitup]

(3) Brandon Ambrosino (Writer who has had articles published in the New York Times and The Atlantic amongst others)

I'm gay but I wasn't born this way. Is sexuality purely the result of our biology? Brandon Ambrosino argues that simplistic explanations have ignored the fluid, shape-shifting nature of our desires.
“You can’t be gay.”

She was on top of me.

It wasn’t a command — it was a challenge. You so obviously cannot be gay, was her implication, because this is good sex.

It was 2006, a full five years before Lady Gaga would set the Born This Way argument atop its unassailable cultural perch, but even then the popular understanding of orientation was that it was something you were born with, something you couldn’t change. If you happened to engage in activity that ran counter to your sexual identity, then you had two options: you were lying to yourself and everyone else, or you were just experimenting.

The sexual categories were rigid. Fixed. They weren’t subject to human imagination or experimentation – to the frustration of many sociologists, and kids, like myself, who found themselves inexplicably in bed with a player from the other team.

My sexual journey through college was anything but run-of-the-mill. I came out at a conservative Christian college in the US and was in a gay relationship for around two years with a basketball player who ended up marrying a woman. During that time, we both pal’d around with girls on the side. I even went so far as to fall in love with one. To this day, she and I joke about how she was the only girl I was ever in love with, and how I would’ve been quite happy marrying her.

As a writer, this kind of complicated story is incredibly interesting to me – mostly because it shows that my own personal history resists the kind of easy classifications that have come to dominate discussions of sexuality. Well, you must have been gay the whole time, some might think, and because of some religious shame, you decided to lie to yourself and experiment with a girl. But that was nothing more than a blip in the road. After all, most kids experiment with heterosexuality in college, don’t they?

If so, that ‘blip in the road’ has always been a thorn in my flesh. How do I explain that I was honestly in love with a woman? Some people might argue that I am innately bisexual, with the capacity to love both women and men. But that doesn’t feel like an accurate description of my sexual history, either.

I’m only speaking for myself here. But what feels most accurate to say is that I’m gay – but I wasn’t born this way.

Many people may find their desires changing direction - and it can't just be explained as experimentation.

In 1977, just over 10% of Americans thought gayness was something you were born with, according to Gallup. That number has steadily risen over time and is currently somewhere between 42% and 50%, depending on the poll. Throughout the same period, the number of Americans who believe homosexuality is “due to someone’s upbringing/environment” fell from just under 60% to 37%.

These ideas reached critical mass in pop culture, first with Lady Gaga’s 2011 Born This Way and one year later with Macklemore’s Same Love, the chorus of which has a gay person singing “I can’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.” Videos started circulating on the internet featuring gay people asking straight people “when they chose to be straight.” Around the same time, the Human Rights Campaign declared unequivocally that “Being gay is not a choice,” and to claim that it is “gives unwarranted credence to roundly disproven practices such as conversion or reparative therapy.”

People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often cast as homophobic, and their thinking is considered backward

As Jane Ward notes in Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, what’s interesting about many of these claims is how transparent their speakers are with their political motivations. “Such statements,” she writes, “infuse biological accounts with an obligatory and nearly coercive force, suggesting that anyone who describes homosexual desire as a choice or social construction is playing into the hands of the enemy.” People who challenge the Born This Way narrative are often cast as homophobic, and their thinking is considered backward – even if they are themselves gay.

 

[Crankitup]

(4)

I'm not going to spend a lot of time forgiving myself or forgiving anybody else because I started out straight. Okay? I say to people, "You're going to have to take me as I am. I am converted, if you wish, okay? I used to be straight, now I'm gay. I'm sorry if it would make you happy that I was born this way, but I wasn't."a gay woman, quoted in Vera Whisman's Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity, 1996

 

[Crankitup]

(5)

I don't know . . . I find the idea that it's all biological and there's no choice in the matter somewhat dismal. "All your behavior is plotted out by your DNA. Try and look surprised." I don't think anything is that simple. Sexual identity is forged by years of experience and sensations along a spectrum of possibile feelings one has, or at least that's how I experienced it with a man I fell in love with a few years back. Ultimately, I really feel that I did choose to live the life I lead. Not because being gay is wrong or evil, but because while I intellectually can love a man, I don't feel the same way about them that I do about women. Which might be genetic, or it might be due to years of being told I'm supposed to feel that way, or it might even be a rational choice I made. I'd like to see us get to a place where we didn't really worry about this.Ezrael, in a post to the Metafilter Meta-Meta-Meta-Madness Community 'Blog, May 26, 2000

 

[Crankitup]

(6)

Although I have been married and have two sons, I was a late bloomer and decided in my late 20s or early 30s that being a lesbian was OK and that, for me, it is a choice. Reader Response to "Why Are We Gay?" survey conducted by The Advocate, July 2001

 

[Crankitup]

(7)

I am 46 years old. I am female. I was married for 26 years and have three children and two grandchildren. In my case it was definitely a choice. When I was 35 or so, I met this woman, and we became friends. In the manner of teenagers, and at her suggestion, we decided to "experiment" sexually. I laugh now, to think back on it. I was petrified at the thought, but one day I looked at her and said, "OK, kiss me." We looked at each other and laughed, and she did. My response was, "Well, what the hell, the sky didn't fall! Do it again." . . . I made the choice to be a lesbian. I have found that sexually it is the right choice for me. I have been very lucky in that my children are totally accepting of my choice of lifestyle and my ex-husband is one of my best friends.;Reader Response to "Why Are We Gay?" survey conducted by The Advocate, July

 

[Crankitup]

(8)

There's a big controversy now: Is lesbianism hereditary? People are trying to find a genetic predisposition to being gay. I think part of this is positive in that researchers are trying to tell the establishment, "Don't try to cure homosexuality. They were born this way. A certain percent of the population is going to be this way, no matter what you do."But even if they're right, what about those for whom it's not hereditary? Many women say it's a choice. They have chosen lesbianism because of positive experiences with women. . . .Why are we so afraid to say we chose it? It's so scary to take that chance and say, "I am choosing it. It's really what I want to do. It's not because my DNA is making me. DNA be damned, I think I'll be a lesbian. JoAnn Loulan, Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves and Each Other, p. 35

 

[Crankitup]

(9)

I received an e-mail [that] basically said, "Queer by Choice is a double-edged sword. If people can choose to be queer, why can't queers choose to be straight?" This question [angered] me tremendously. Why, you might ask? Because, duh, I chose to be queer. That's the reality of it. If that has bad political ramifications well then so be it. We cannot change reality for politics. It angers me that someone could even try to deny me my own reality. I have yet to say of queers, "oh well, they just can't be born that way because that implies it's a disability." or whatever. Frankly, I don't really [care]. But don't come shove politics down my throat like that will change the reality that I consciously chose to be queer when I was thirteen.Eve Shalom, "Common Sense (or Lack Thereof)," diary entry on glass.poetess.org, May 31, 2000

 

[Crankitup]

If anyone wants more, just let me know.

 

[TheSunGod]

If anyone wants more, just let me know.

Too keep it shorter couldn’t you just have quoted Denzel Washington in “The Book of Eli” ...

“There’s always a choice.”

 

[Slartibartfast]

Putting clergy abuse in context, research from the US Department of Education found that about 5-7 percent of public school teachers engaged in similar sexually abusive behavior with their students during a similar time frame. While no comprehensive studies have been conducted with most other religious traditions, a small scale study that I was involved with found that 4 percent of Anglican priests had violated minors in western Canada and many reports have mentioned that clerical abuse of minors is common with other religious leaders and clerics as well. https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/...8/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction

Now I'm not catholic and Im not trying to defend the behaviour, but claims abuse is higher amongst clergy just isnt true. It's a society-wide issue

The sexual offences were horrendous.
The years of cover up, moving off priests between parishes, the badgering of victims to be silent or to accept the pittance compensation offered by the churches leaves it with zero credibility.
Where was their pastorial care??????

Religion is a con!!!

 

[Slartibartfast]

If anyone wants more, just let me know.

So 8 billion people and you have quoted a few who dont speak for all as proof! Haha
I thought you were going to offer some proof???? Not some extremist opinions.
Keep on hating , it explains why you are out of touch.
Time to wind it down!

 

[Crankitup]

So 8 billion people and you have quoted a few who dont speak for all as proof! Haha
I thought you were going to offer some proof???? Not some extremist opinions.

8 billion gays?? What are you on?



There's plenty more, how many do you want? Let me guess, you'll label them extremist too with out even reading them. Close-minded much? Anyone that challenges your presuppositions you will label extremist. Easier to use that Ad Hominem logical fallacy rather than question your own beliefs. Here I was thinking you might be brave enough to apologise for insinuating I was lying and instead you just dismiss them as extremist. Nice one champ.