Blaming the victims

I would like, just once, to be able to read the news without being outraged.

Lately that wish has been a losing proposition.  Every other news story these days provides enough material to fuel thermonuclear-level fury in anyone who has a shred of sensibility and compassion.  It's reached the point where I'm thinking of avoiding the news altogether.  It seems preferable to remain ignorant than dying of a self-induced aneurysm.

Today's contribution from the Fountains of Rage Department hearkens back to the story of Brock Turner, the Stanford student who raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster and got a slap-on-the-wrist six month jail sentence.  To add to the injustice, Turner's father and friends rose to his defense, never once mentioning the victim; the father expressed grief over his son's having to pay such a price for "twenty minutes of action."

At least in this case the victim found her voice, writing a letter to her attacker that was so poignant and powerful that it brought me to tears.  The judge in the case, Aaron Persky, has been the target of a well-deserved backlash because of his caving to white male privilege and victim blaming, and in fact was removed from another sexual assault case by Santa Clara county district attorney Jeff Rosen. "After ... the recent turn of events, we lack confidence that Judge Persky can fairly participate in this upcoming hearing in which a male nurse sexually assaulted an anesthetized female patient," Rosen said.

Well, yeah.  And it'd be nice if this kind of retribution were served around more generally.  Instead, we have two news stories that illustrate that even this level of justice is far from the rule.

First, we have a case in England where a wealthy Eton student who was found in possession of 1,185 images of child pornography was allowed to be tried under a false name in order to "protect his family's reputation."  In addition, he received no jail time -- he was given an eighteen-month suspended sentence.

The student, who was tried under the name of Andrew Picard, would probably have remained comfortably anonymous if it hadn't been for an article in The Daily Mirror that slipped up and revealed his true identity as Andrew Boeckman, son of Phillip J. Boeckman, a wealthy lawyer whose clients have included Goldman Sachs and J. P. Morgan.  The article vanished from the internet -- "mysteriously," says Summer Winterbottom in Evolve Politics -- but is still available in a cached copy, the link to which is in the article cited above.

Andrew Boeckman ("Andrew Picard") [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The judge in the case, Peter Ross, seemed more sympathetic with Boeckman and his family than he did with the victims, some of whom were toddlers.  "Your family didn’t deserve that (suffering) but it is a consequence of this sort of offending," Ross said during the trial.  "Inevitably your privileged background and where you were going to school added a degree of frisson to the reporting."

Story #2 comes from my home state of New York, where a bill to help the survivors of child abuse was killed in the State Assembly by passing the deadline without coming to a vote.  The bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, would have increased the time a sexual abuse case could be pursued by five years, created a six-month window to revive old cases, and treated public and private entities identically in cases of sexual abuse.  The Assembly, however, saw fit to let the bill fail rather than allowing it to come to a vote.

Angry yet?  Just wait.  Because Catholic League President Bill Donohue crowed about the demise of the Child Victims Act, saying that Markey is a "principle enemy of the church" and that the act was a "sham."

Then he made the following statement, which I had to read three times before I could honestly believe my eyes: "This was a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church."

I beg your pardon?  Curious choice of words, given that what you're gloating about is protecting rapists.  But not content even with that outrageous statement, Donohue had the following to say in addition:

If the statute of limitations were lifted on offenses involving the sexual abuse of minors, the only winners would be greedy and bigoted lawyers out to line their pockets in a rash of settlements.  The big losers would be the poor, about whom the attorneys and activists care little: When money is funneled from parishioners to lawyers, services to the needy suffer.  The Catholic League is proud of its role in this victory.

How about the "big losers" now, who are the victims of predators who use their position of power and authority to inflict harm on children?   Donohue, and the members of the New York State Assembly who were complicit in this decision, have chosen to protect a powerful and wealthy institution rather than giving aid to the victims of sexual abuse.

Bill Donohue [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But that's what people like Donohue, and British Judge Peter Ross, and California Judge Aaron Persky excel at; swiveling the blame around so that the victims become somehow culpable in their own injury.

The bottom line is that no institution, family, or individual should be above the law, regardless of their wealth, power, or self-perception of holiness.  The first priority in these cases should be the welfare of the victims, and seeking justice for the damage that has been inflicted upon them.  And the fact that people like Ross, Persky, and Donohue are in a position to deflect our attention from that priority makes them guilty of perpetuating a culture in which rape victims, however young, are to blame for their own suffering.

Meddling with science

Something I find really peculiar is the selectiveness with which people apply the tenets of their own religion.

Take, for example, staunch Catholic and Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum, who last month opined that Pope Francis was out of his depth to speak on climate change:

He’s someone who is as committed to the nuclear family as I am.  I’m a huge fan of his and his focus on making sure that we have a healthier society. 

I understand and I sympathize and I support completely the pope’s call for us to do more to create opportunities for people to be able to rise in society, and to care for the poor.  [But] the church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists. 

I think when we get involved with controversial political and scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.  And I’ve said this to the bishops many times when they get involved in agriculture policy or things like that, that are really outside of the scope of what the church’s main message is.

Some people have responded with comments like, "Don't you people think the pope is infallible?"  Now, even an atheist like myself knows that the official church policy is that the pope only invokes papal infallibility when he is "speaking ex cathedra;" in the words of Catholic Encyclopedia author P. J. Toner, "When, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church."  But shouldn't his word still carry weight, even when he's not claiming to be infallible?

I mean, he is the pope, right?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And as far as Santorum claiming that we should "leave science to the scientists" -- well, it's not like the politicians are scientists, either.  Hell, they don't even listen to the scientists.  So what it seems like is that the policy is "people speaking with authority should be believed as long as it's politically expedient and I already agreed with their position."

Even more striking are the comments this week from Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who said that Catholics don't have to follow the pope's call to environmental stewardship because God has no specific opinions thereof:

The pope has the authority to speak on matters of faith and morals. Once you get beyond that, can you speak to other issues?  Of course you can speak to other issue, but I don’t care whether it’s Pope Francis or his predecessors or his successors some day, once you get outside the domain of faith and morals, be careful.  Be careful and be careful particularly when you get into the weeds and get very specific. 

For example, are we God’s stewards?  Are we supposed to take care of the Earth?  Of course, that’s out of the Old Testament, it’s out of the New Testament, it’s totally unobjectionable... 

The problem is, the more specific you get [on issues like climate change], Catholics will scratch their heads and say he's a very nice man. 

His encyclical on climate change will come out later this month, and he's going to speak to the UN, so we'll see more at that time.  And Catholics will offer him respect, but in terms of accepting what he has to say as guiding their thoughts, no, it’s not going to happen.  We know, for example, that even on issues as the death penalty, for example, or on gun control or on helping the poor, there’s a lot of different issues where Catholics can disagree on.  When it comes to things that are non-negotiable -- I'll give you two quick ones, abortion and euthanasia -- it's not my opinion, it's in the catechism, it says that these are intrinsically evil.  No one has ever said that air pollution is intrinsically evil.  So, people need to get up to speed on this.

So, basically, god is vehemently against the killing of one person at a time, but has no problem with the killing of lots of people at the same time -- such as in Beijing, where the estimates are that over 400,000 people die yearly from the effects of air pollution?

Of course, that's not the only place where the "word of god" kind of misses the boat.  Interesting how there are all sorts of commandments about worshiping god, and honoring your mother and father, and all that sort of thing, but never once does the bible say, "Slavery is bad.  It's immoral to claim that you own another human being."  No prohibitions against rape, either.  No, we're just given rules regarding how badly we can beat our slaves (Exodus 21:20-21) and rules requiring a rapist to marry his victim "and never divorce her as long as he lives" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).

What Donohue and his ilk are doing is the usual; cherry-picking what they like from the bible and the catechism and the pope's declarations, and ignoring the rest.  So once again, what it sounds like is that we have someone who's making god in his own image.  Abortion and euthanasia -- which, allow me to point out, weren't mentioned in the bible, either -- are "non-negotiable," but the pope's commentary on climate change is nothing more than the musings of "a very nice man."  So take your own opinions and political biases and put those in the mouth of god, and dismiss anything else.

The whole thing reminds me of a joke my dad used to tell.  A fire-and-brimstone preacher was intoning to his congregation a litany of the evils they needed to avoid in order to escape being sent to hell.  Old Mrs. Jones, sitting in the front pew, was listening with rapt attention and great appreciation.

"And who can argue," the preacher thundered, "about the evils of strong drink?  Liquor is the devil's own brew!  Every sip scorching its way down your throat should remind you of the hellfire waiting for you!"  And Mrs. Jones took a pinch of snuff, and said, "Aaaaaaamen, Brother!"

"And immorality of the flesh!" the preacher continued.  "Fornicating and thinking lustful thoughts may make you burn inside, but that is nothing to the burning your body will experience in the fiery furnace!"  And Mrs. Jones took a pinch of snuff, and again said, "Aaaaaaamen!"

"And evil rock music, all that hootin' and hollerin' and chantin' of unholy words!  You must close your ears, brothers and sisters!"  Another pinch of snuff for Mrs. Jones, and a rolling, "Aaaaaamen!"

Then the preacher said, "And the horrors of the use of that evil weed, straight from the pits of hell... the evil scourge of tobacco..."

And Mrs. Jones said, "Wouldn't you know it?  He's stopped preachin' and started meddlin.'"