Molestation isn't so bad
You know, this genuinely irks me. I was never really bothered by Dawkins' earlier-made personal observation that he considered priests "threatening his soul with hell" or whatever to be a greater slight against him than an incident of molestation; kudos for not succumbing to a permanent victim mindset. And objectively, a rape and/or murder case of course is a more serious offense than a one-time non-violent molestation; who would ever argue?
But this blatant apology is something new. Pedophiles of 50 years ago are of such a "different era" that it's unfair to condemn their offenses as long as they didn't rape or kill their victims? What the hell??
But obviously this isn't completely new territory; it's the mindset that evolved into the current scandals that the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts are currently mired in - it was just a "mild touching up", no need to ruin a guy's life over a simple molestation or ten, right?
Jesus. Dawkins just lost a whole lot of credibility with me. This must be what it felt like to have been a woman who had experienced sexual harassment, when Dawkins said they should just deal with it because after all, women in Muslim countries are being beaten (or something along those lines).
Quote:
CANTERBURY, England (RNS) Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s best-known and outspoken atheists, has provoked outrage among child protection agencies and experts after suggesting that recent child abuse scandals have been overblown. In an interview in The Times magazine on Saturday (Sept. 7), Dawkins, 72, he said he was unable to condemn what he called “the mild pedophilia” he experienced at an English school when he was a child in the 1950s. Referring to his early days at a boarding school in Salisbury, he recalled how one of the (unnamed) masters “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.” He said other children in his school peer group had been molested by the same teacher but concluded: “I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm.” “I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today,” he said. He said the most notorious cases of pedophilia involve rape and even murder and should not be bracketed with what he called “just mild touching up.” |
You know, this genuinely irks me. I was never really bothered by Dawkins' earlier-made personal observation that he considered priests "threatening his soul with hell" or whatever to be a greater slight against him than an incident of molestation; kudos for not succumbing to a permanent victim mindset. And objectively, a rape and/or murder case of course is a more serious offense than a one-time non-violent molestation; who would ever argue?
But this blatant apology is something new. Pedophiles of 50 years ago are of such a "different era" that it's unfair to condemn their offenses as long as they didn't rape or kill their victims? What the hell??
But obviously this isn't completely new territory; it's the mindset that evolved into the current scandals that the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts are currently mired in - it was just a "mild touching up", no need to ruin a guy's life over a simple molestation or ten, right?
Jesus. Dawkins just lost a whole lot of credibility with me. This must be what it felt like to have been a woman who had experienced sexual harassment, when Dawkins said they should just deal with it because after all, women in Muslim countries are being beaten (or something along those lines).
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=265120&goto=newpost
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