Tuesday, December 03, 2019

'NBA's Dwayne Wade defends his son from anti-LGBTQ trolls' & other Tue midday news briefs

NBA player Dwayne Wade, his wife actress Gabrielle Union and their family.

NBA player Dwyane Wade forced to defend his preteen son from anti-LGBTQ trolls - Now THIS is a true black man to stand up for his son. Not one of those annoying ho-teps.

Legal reckoning: New abuse suits could cost church over $4B - It seems to me that children are safer being read a book by a drag queen than attending the Catholic Church. Just saying.

Why the LDS Church Joined LGBTQ Advocates in Supporting Utah's Conversion Therapy Ban - Let me sit down for this one.

I Was Harassed After Being Outed By My Students. Then Something Amazing Happened. - An awful story, but with a happy ending. Just another bit of proof of how our community turns adversity into an asset.

1 comment:

Frank said...

I saw the photo of Dwayne Wade and family and just saw a loving family. I had to really search to see what people were criticizing. I totally don't see what's wrong with the "crop top" but I may not be culturally sensitive to such things.

As a former Catholic (and one who still has some positive feelings as for an estranged parent) and one who went to Catholic schools from grade school through college and grad school, I cannot even imagine being abused by any of the clergy who were assigned to schools or parishes I attended. And I am sitting here trying to imagine how I might have reacted had I been approached with any kind of sexual overture by a priest. I was already experiencing overwhelming guilt over masturbation and sexual attraction to men, and most of that guilt was at the hands of the church, the priests behind the screen in the confessional, and those to whom I went for "counseling". If any of them had made sexual advances to me as a pre-teen or teenager, I think I might have had such internal conflict and cognitive dissonance that I might have totally decompensated and ended up in a psych ward.

I don't understand how the sexual abuse amongst Catholic clergy can be so widespread. It is mind-boggling. If only every individual priest could have envisioned how their behavior would affect those whom they abused and how their behavior would have lasting consequences for those victims and for the church at large, perhaps they would have sought help for their predilections.

There was a detailed, professional study/report some years ago that I think addresses the issue of arrested development of many men who attended seminary schools in their pre-teenage years and joined the seminary as teens. Being cut off from the outside world and prevented from experiencing a more normal development likely contributed to their later sexual/psychological disfunction. I am not in any way making an excuse for their abusive behavior, but, I think, the priests who were molesters and abusers were also, in some sense, unwitting victims themselves. It is a very sad story among so many sad stories in our time.