Op-Ed—ENOUGH With the Religious Kettle Calling the Porn Pot Black

"Everybody knows that you love me baby"Everybody knows that you really do"Everybody knows that you've been faithful"Give or take a night or two"Everybody knows you've been discreet"But there were so many people you just had to meet"Without your clothes"And everybody knows" —Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows   At least in the United States, adult content—porn—has been branded by the world's top religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam—as one of the most sinful—that is, bad—activities a human being can engage in. Doesn't matter if people buy it, look at it, talk favorably about it or, "God forbid," make it, sell it or act in it, the prescription from those religions is that such indulgers are going to Hell, to burn for eternity in a fiery pit. And the reason those people are so against porn is that for the most part, it paints sex as an enjoyable and relatively consequence-free activity. You look at it, you get off on it, you wipe up the fluids and you're all good. But as all good Christians and Jews know, once Adam and Eve took a bite out of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (!) and saw that they were naked, that was the ballgame as far as sex was concerned. From then on (except for King Solomon, of course) sex was something you did only when married, to create babies—and if possible, you did it in the dark, undressing in the closet before climbing into bed under the covers with the lights off for a missionary-position romp. And as pretty much everyone in the adult entertainment community knows, as do many of its fans, that's just sick. In fact, sex is pleasurable, looking at (some) naked people is pleasurable, getting off by looking at people having sex, naked or otherwise, is pleasurable, and there's exactly zero evidence that anyone pays a price after they're dead for indulging in such pleasure. But for the moment, that's beside the point. What is to the point is that within the last week, it's become internationally known that the very people who've spent the most time criticizing and deploring porn, both verbally and in writing; who've passed and supported laws making it illegal to buy and sell porn; and who've defamed pretty much anyone connected with the adult industry, have behaved far worse, sexually speaking, than virtually anyone who does make or sell porn. I'm referring, of course, to evangelicals in general, but here specifically to Catholic priests and church hierarchy, the subjects of a far-reaching report put together by a Pennsylvania grand jury which describes in some detail how some 300 predatory priests in Pennsylvania's six largest dioceses—Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Scranton—molested more than (likely many, many more than) 1,000 children over the past 70 years—and their superiors did their best to hide that fact, to provide cover for the priests that did it, and who went out of their way to minimize the problem in the press. "Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability," the grand jury wrote. "Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades." Want some examples? How about Father Chester Gawronski, who fondled and masturbated at least 12 different children by saying he was just showing them "how to check for cancer." How about Father Thomas D. Skotek, who raped an underage girl, got her pregnant, then paid for her abortion. His Bishop later wrote in a letter—to Skotek!—"This is a very difficult time in your life, and I realize how upset you are. I too share your grief." How about Father Edmond Parrakow, who admitted to molesting "approximately thirty-five male children" because sex with girls was "sinful" and raping boys didn’t "violate" them. One altar boy said Parrakow told them to go naked under their cassocks during Mass because God didn’t want "man-made clothes" touching their skin during services. (Parrakow now works in a shopping mall.) (Many more examples can be found in the New York Times article here, an article by Hemant Mehta here, or the full grand jury report here.) But the problem isn't just the rampant molestation; there's also the attempts by bishops and other church officials to cover the whole thing up. According to the grand jury, such church officials used "a playbook for concealing the truth," as The New York Times' Scott Dodd reported. Among the clergy's tactics were (are!) making sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. For instance, never say "rape"; say "inappropriate contact" or "boundary issues." Then, after failing to conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel, church hierarchy in an effort to appear to act with integrity would send priests for "evaluation" at church-run "psychiatric treatment centers," where "experts" would "diagnose" whether the priest was a pedophile, based largely on the priest’s "self-reports"—and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in sexual contact with a child. Perhaps worse, bishops and cardinals allowed priest-rapists to continue to live in church housing rent-free, and in several cases, when their molestations became known, transferred them to distant dioceses to continue their illegal activities. And of course, "above all, don’t tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don’t treat it that way; handle it like a personnel matter, "in house." Surely, at this point, many members of the adult entertainment community reading this are feeling a bit nauseous. Wanna know who isn't? How about Haley Halverson, Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach at the (virulently anti-porn) National Center on Sexual Exploitation, who wrote on Townhall.com, "The heartbreaking reality is wherever there are people—especially when some have greater power or authority than others or where an institution desires self-preservation—there is the possibility of sexual abuse. Sometimes the power differential is in the boardroom at work. Sometimes the institution seeking self-preservation is a Hollywood production company. And sometimes, the scene of sexual abuse is the church." YEAH! Why should a priest be held to a higher standard than, say, Harvey Weinstein or Republican National Committee finance chairman Steve Wynn? Or how about Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, president and founder of the anti-gay Ruth Institute? "Some news stories give the impression that 'sexual orientation' played no role in past or current clergy abuse scandals," she wrote. "However, two studies by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop) in 2004 and 2011 found that over 80% of those abused were victims of male-on-male predation by priests against under-age (pre-teen and teenaged) boys. ... There has been an active homosexual subculture in the Catholic Church, which operates in seminaries and dioceses." Imagine that: an institution that tells its employees that they can't marry or have heterosexual sexual relationships somehow attracts a number of gay employees! As if that were an excuse for them to molest children—some of whom, let's recall, were little girls! (Pedophilia knows no gender bias, either in the perps or the victims.) But my favorite has to be Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who's put out an 11-page report on what he thinks the Pennsylvania grand jury got wrong. Here are a couple of examples: "Myth: The grand jury report was initiated to make the guilty pay. Fact: False. It has nothing to do with punishing the guilty. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh "Salacious" Shapiro admitted on August 14 that 'Almost every instance of child abuse (the grand jury) found was too old to be prosecuted.' He's right. But he knew that from the get-go, so why did he pursue this dead end? Why did he waste millions of taxpayer dollars in pursuit of alleged offenders when he knew he couldn't do anything about it? Because he ... wanted to shame the Catholic Church." YEAH! It had nothing to do with exposing a vast group of religious pedophiles, many of whom still molest kids and whose superiors are still covering it up! "Myth: The priests 'raped' their victims. ... Fact: This is an obscene lie. Most of the alleged victims were not raped: they were groped or otherwise abused, but not penetrated, which is what the word 'rape' means." BIG difference! Gee, Bill, thanks for pointing that out! Not to mention pointing out that most of the kids who were molested were 15 rather than 5 years old, which for Donohue means that the priests who did it weren't "pedophiles"—a legally incorrect stance which Hemant Mehta described as "a new low bar for Catholic Church defenders." But here's an important point to take away from this situation: This is a study of the molestations and cover-ups committed by Catholic clergy in just one state. There are 49 others to go, a couple of which have done their own investigations, though few as thorough as Pennsylvania's, and there are plenty of other clergy from other religious sects—Baptists, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Rabbis, Imams—the list is long—who haven't yet been investigated. Guaranteed, it's not just Catholic clergy who are molesting kids. My advice? Print out a copy of the 1,356-page Pennsylvania grand jury report and be prepared to drop it at the feet of the next religious asshole who tries to tell you that you'll be going to Hell for making or watching porn!