Were the priests molesting 15 & 16 year old alter boys pedophiles or gay?

As I recall without Googling the media and everyone else referred to them as pedophile priests. Does that change when the person doing the molesting turns out to be a Republican congressman? Kind of reminds me of when the rules were changed not too long ago and a 14 year old Iraqi girl became known as a woman after she was raped and murdered.

Don

9, 10, 11, or some such thing.

But good luck on your hunt to manufacture outrage.

is that the distinction will not matter to the average American, especially if there are young boys involved. It renders an intellectual discussion of precise definitions moot.

I think the rule of thumb is pre-puberty or hairless. Ted Nugnent molested Courtney Love when she was eleven. Now that's a pedophile.

Oh, god, there's an image I didn't need. At ANY age.

It's ridiculous that Captain Loincloth tries to paint himself as the "family values" guy. What a crock. He's lucky the statute of limitations has probably expired for most of his shit.

Well, maybe now I can forgive CL for the shitty things she said about Jerry Garcia when he died. Not only was she probably traumatized as a kid by her encounter with the 'Nuge, she must have listened to his music, too.

So how much of it was simply that boys were available to priests?

If this is true, no wonder she's so fucked up. Sheesh.

A minor is anyone under the age of 18. What part of this law is difficult to understand?

and abusers of a position of authority. They were also mostly gay. But if they were abusing 15/16 year olds, they weren't pedophiles in the correct sense of the word. The rules haven't changed; language has always been used loosely, and it is human nature to choose the worst possible words to describe someone/something you detest, even if the words aren't entirely accurate...

and come up with the least damaging, most arcane term we can find.

"Pedophile" is far too politically effective and so should be excluded from our vocabulary. Otherwise we dare not call ourselves "progressives".














:sarcasm:

So we must not use it or we may be considered insensitive.

Don

The catholic thing pales when you consider the deviance and what it has sponsored
in our society, that this sick patriarch has foisted upon us years of disservice,
buggering children for the republican party, teaching homosexuality for Repulican
lawmakers is OK, but just not for anyone else.

If sports personalities are to be held to a 'higher' standard of conduct, then what
shall we expect from the congressional member responsible for *anything* about children.

Republicans are willing to entertain child sex and sexual favours in the people's house,
as if the money corruption is not enough, this is not a man lying about an affair, it
is a bunch of men covering up a homosexual child predator ring in the congress!!! Holy shit!
I hope every republican out there knows what they're voting for.

If their victims were in their teens, they were not pedophiles. You have to be attracted to children who haven't reached puberty yet to be a pedophile. There's a separate term for people who are sexually attracted to young teens though. By the way, if the kid is under-aged, it's still illegal no matter if the victim is 5 or 17. And aking advantage of your authority the way the priests did -- and the way Foley did -- is completely despicable.

Are they gay? I imagine some of them are, some aren't. Although it was the boy victims who got most of the ink, there were also female victims.

And I find it completely hypocritical for some on DU to now want to change the language because Foley happens to be gay. Adults, who know the law and social mores, preying on young people, are pedophiles.

The DSM struggles with the definition in an effort to not sweep up advertising, and the like, into mental health diagnoses. But the law is clear. This isn't an incidental 'oops', this is a pattern. The man got his jollies luring teens into sexually explicit communications. He's a pedophile every bit as much as any of those gross adults caught on Dateline, he needs to be arrested and made an example of. Nobody is above the law.

Hairsplitting isn't a winning political strategy. "Pedophile" is just about the worst thing you can be called in this society, and we should make sure this sticks to Foley, and the rest of the GOP by association, like glue. We need the words "Republican pedophile" to be repeated on the airwaves as many times as possible.

Please. A specific answer. When did Clinton have sex with anyone underage?

Are they trying to say that there's no difference between sex among adults and adults having sex with children? Are they saying that everyone who has sex outside of marriage is a sex offender? Or are they saying all the pedophiles should be let out of prison?

If they try to "spin" that, anyone competent will turn it around on them in a BIG way:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2269905#2275692

ARE PEDOPHILES IN MY BOOK.

A priest who is gay might lust after and/or have sex with adult young men as well as the teen alter boys. There do seem to be adult men (and perhaps women too) who may be heterosexual when it comes to adults but who lust after and/or have sex with teenage boys. Then, of course, there are pedophiles who don't lust after and/or have sex with any adults.
In only the first case is the priest gay.