liz3564 wrote:Loran, you asked me to point out where you mentioned a leftist conspiracy:Droopy wrote:After this latest nightmarish exercise in leftist moral hysterics that makes every adult male, every father, every Bishop, every scoutmaster, and every Church leader a potential child abuser, and brands every adult male in the nation as a potential risk the moment they are out of sight or alone with a child, I think I'll begin to take my own advice much more seriously.
The final Oprahfication of the world has begun as TD attempts to resurrect the long discredited child sexual abuse hysteria of the mid-eighties to mid-nineties in the interest of stigmatizing male LDS church leaders and driving a wedge of distrust and suspicion between male adult role models in Priesthood leadership positions - all of them, simply because of the the fact that they are male adults - and the children of members.Take a look at the bolded references in your post above. Maybe you didn't specifically say that we were part of a leftist conspiracy, but you obviously think that we are all a bunch of leftists acting out "nightmarish moral hysterics".
I think that this kind hand wringing and authoritarian moral pomposity surrounding such movements as the sexual child abuse hysteria, which is closely associated with the Satanic child abuse hysteria that consumed the mid-eighties to mid-nineties, and resulted in the destruction of numerous lives and reputations, none of which were ever substantiated in a court of law, and which spawned police state like psychological methods and associated theories such as the long discredited "repressed memory syndrome" are well represented by terms such as "nightmarish exercise in leftist moral hysterics". That's precisely what I believe it is, and primarily from whence it comes (which, historically, is correct - it derives from various pop psychology movements and ideas virtually wholly associated with the cultural Left).
The Oprahfication reference was clear hyperbole, but its ground is the systemic dominance by important institutions within society that create and disseminate idea like an "epidemic" of sexual child abuse: the pop media and the Academy. I've made reference nowhere to any "conspiracy" Such ideas are simply the default position of many of our cultural institutions, and to a great extend, the culture itself.Frankly, you're not helping your argument by engaging in ad homs, and continuously making sweeping generalizations, when it has been repeated time and again that we are not trying to slam the Church. We're trying to come up with solutions that will protect children.
TD is attempting to attack and deligitimize a core function of its ecclesiastical leaders, and a major aspect of Priesthood government. Don't make me gag. She has also implicitly claimed that virtually all males are suspects by this definition alone. She has also claimed that an "epidemic" of child sexual abuse is underway, when no legitimate empirical evidence supports any such claim.Get your head out of the sand and see what's happening in the world, Loran. I don't like it anymore than you do, but the fact remains that child abuse is a problem.
Yes, it is a problem. What it is not is an epidemic, and it is extremely rare in teh genral population. The overwhelming number of adult males in society, whether LDS or not, a very simply not sexually attracted to children. Underage girls in the mid-teens? Of course, but not to obviously sexually immature girls. In other words, the overwhelming number of men have no pedophiliac tendencies or desires. The near totalitarian paranoia and suspicion TD and her movement recommends to deal with the problem are far out of proportion to the problem itself.In an ideal world, should we have to worry about bishop's interviews? No, we shouldn't. And when the Millennium finally happens, we won't have to worry about it again.
Nor was it worried about in generations past, until around the mid-eighties, because of its rarity. The hysteria whipped up by TD and others is a direct result of the effect of gender feminist ideology upon the greater society and its institutions, and is, at its base, anti-male, anti-family, and anti-religion.In the meantime, as a fellow member, why don't you help us brainstorm some solutions?
Working toward serious restrictions on the availability of pornography, especially such that sexualizes and eroticizes younger woman, would be among the best things we could do. The sexualization of children began, even in mainstream popular media (the infamous Brooke Shields jeans ads) in the eighties, and has continued both in mainstream media as well as softcore and hardcore porn.One thing I thought about is to require bishops to go through some type of professional youth counseling courses? I think this would be a good place to start, and is a long time coming.
Why? If the problem is that latent or incipient pedophilia is inherent in much of teh male adult population, then virtually the entire society is irredeemably sick, and no youth counseling course is going to stem the tide. The idea that a typical Bishop is not aware, especially given his gospel background, that sexual flirtation with an underage girl, let alone a mature woman, in an interview situation, is wrong, is rather fantastic, in my view. What could a course add to this but to simply restate the obvious?
And if we are speaking of very underage girls (girls who still appear girlish, and sexually immature), then we are not speaking about attraction to a young, say 15 to 17 year old who looks older than she is, but a perverse sexual fetish, and idea that any but a vanishingly tiny fraction of the male population is given to this sexual addiction is hokum. To take a stance of trusting no one, and suspecting everyone, given the actual magnitude of the problem, is far more dangerous, in potential, than the problem itself.
