This is predictable. Just as so often conservative Catholics want to deflect attention from child-molesting priests by using their crimes to smear gay people [see: Bill Donohue], Evangelical hate group spokesmouths are now taking the crimes of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State as an excuse to spew bile at gay people.

First up, Bryan Fischer:

The press has focused largely on Paterno and others in the Penn State hierarchy who covered up Sandusky’s pedophilia, some of whom even committed perjury to keep his dark and dirty secret from being exposed.

But perhaps some of that press focus is diversionary, to direct the attention of the public away from one of the darkest pathologies associated with homosexual behavior: homosexuals molest children at ten times the rate of heterosexuals.

Homosexual activists will of course lamely argue that since Sandusky is married, he is not a homosexual. Fine, call him bisexual if you will. But his sex crimes are same-sex crimes, and 10-year old boys whose bodies have been cruelly invaded could care less what label homosexual activists want to slap on their abuser.

As Tintin at Sadly, No! replies, “Sadly, No!”

Also, gay activists will not argue that due to Sandusky’s marriage, he is not homosexual. That would be lame indeed, as we know for a fact that it’s extremely common for conservative Christian men to be simultaneously married to women and also gayer than Glee. However, we will argue that the fact that he’s married and has been molesting young children means that he is a freaking pedophile, as that is what science, reality and common sense suggest.

Let me be clear. A heterosexual pedophile who committed such crimes against young girls should likewise be sent to the chair. Forcible rape of anyone used to be a capital offense everywhere in this country and should be so again.

Without getting into the argument over what punishment should be meted out for these heinous crimes, for our purposes we’ll just note that Bryan Fischer doesn’t seem to know a damn thing about the phenomenon of child sexual abuse. People who molest young kids molest young kids, regardless of the gender of the child. Bryan’s desire to use this as a way to smear gay people is disgusting.

So is Porno Pete’s:

LaBarbera: How Many Boy Victims of Penn State Homosexual Predator Jerry Sandusky Will End Up Thinking They are ‘Gay’?

Ugh. Whichever ones would have been gay anyway, you moron. Indeed, and sadly, many, many kids have been molested since the dawn of time, by people of the same and different genders as they are, and they have grown up to be straight, gay, bisexual, and whatever else in between. There is NO evidence that being molested “causes” anyone to be gay.

Many openly homosexual (“gay”) men, like CNN anchor Don Lemon, were molested as boys or experienced abnormally early sexualization. Yet many of these same men do NOT see their boyhood victimization at the hands of homosexual male predators as causing their homosexuality. (This is due partly to the success of the modern “gay” movement that falsely ascribes “gayness” to a person’s (innate) identity, and emphasizes the ambiguous notion of “sexual orientation” as opposed to behavior that is sinful, destructive and changeable.)

Don Lemon has actually talked about this in detail, so it’s a wonder Porno Pete’s so completely unwilling to listen to Lemon’s words on the subject, while simultaneously playing armchair psychologist to a man he’ll never be lucky enough to meet.

Thus, how many boy victims of homosexual predator Sandusky will end up believing that being homosexual (“gay”) is “who they are”? How many will struggle with sexual identity issues? And how many will be told by LGBT advocates and liberal-minded people just to “accept being gay” as “who they are” because they were “born that way”?

Because the media and academia have largely become apologists for the modern homosexualist movement, they downplay or ignore obvious causative factors in the formation of “gay” identity – including pederastic molestation. CNN’s Lemon is a case in point: he is now an “out gay” celebrity, yet few question the absurdity of him not associating the molestation of his youth with his later embrace of homosexuality as a positive identity.

Porno Pete is a scientist and is therefore qualified to point out “obvious causative factors in the formation of gay identity.” Oh wait, no he is not, he is an amateur fetish sex photographer who leads a very small hate group.

There IS a long history connecting homosexuality to pederasty, and a disproportionate link between homosexuality and pedophilia: why else would so many child molestation victims be boys when only 1-3 percent of the population is homosexual? Since cases of women molesting boys remain rare, if homosexuality were not such a strong factor, nearly all of pedophile victims should be girls, which is far from the case.

Except for the fact that there’s a hell of a lot of science on the issue, which points to many factors that lead to boy victims. One of them is ACCESS. Let us look at the Catholic Church again for a minute, please. Who do Catholic priests have the most consistent access to? Young boys! So those who are child molesters are going to go for the kids they have the easiest ACCESS to. This is science, but it’s not that damned complicated.

Sandusky is married but obviously has a homosexuality (perversion) problem.

No, he has a child rape problem. It’s amazing that Porno Pete has missed that child rape is the crux of the Penn State debacle, so blinded is he by his hatred of gay people.

But we’re used to this kind of crap from bizarrely gay-fixated wingnuts like Bryan and Porno Pete.

For the Catholic Church these days, no news is good news, because all the news that comes out makes them look worse and worse:

A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland’s Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims’ groups described as “the smoking gun” needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.

The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican’s rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland’s first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church’s right to handle all child-abuse allegations and determine punishments in house rather than give that power to civil authorities.
Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II’s diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature.”

Storero wrote that canon law, which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church, “must be meticulously followed.” Any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the “highly embarrassing” position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome, he wrote.

From the very top of the Vatican, the church’s image has always been more important than a few thousand raped children. And yet people continue to defend them.

[h/t PZ Myers]

Gather ’round, children, and listen to a tale of the Good Old Days, as told by Pope Benedict nee Ratzinger. He’s a Man of God, so he obviously wouldn’t lie! You’ll remember that when we left off, he was about to tell us that

paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.

Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

BY WHOM?

[By the way, it should tell you how stung the Catholic Church is over its loss of moral authority when the Pope is making excuses, in his Christmas address, for the fact that the corporation over which he is the CEO has become, in the words of Sara Benincasa, "the world’s oldest and largest child-fuckery concern."]

Moving on…

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

When, pray tell, was this taught in any orthodox corner of Christendom? Please, senile former Hitler Youth child-rapist protector man in flowing robes and pretty headdress, ‘splain some more how back in the good old days, child rape was simply ”not the best option,” but certainly not evil.

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.

I know, I know, it’s so embarrassing when people find out about this huge child raping problem the Church has, I mean, it was such a surprise and all, not least of which to the Pope. Oh wait. My memory’s not failing me completely yet, so let’s all remember another story.

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a priest in Wisconsin named Lawrence Murphy!  He used his position of power to rape over 200 children, but there’s a twist!  These children were deaf.  When the abuse came to light, at least in the inner sancta of the Roman Catholic Church, they of course defrocked him immediately and made sure he was never near a child again.  HA HA, JUST KIDDING:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

But, you see, it only became shocking, embarrassing and humiliating in 2010. Why? Because the child-rapists got caught, and Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope, is having to answer for the fact that he, in an official capacity, did everything in his power to protect what is apparently the holy right of priests to have sex with the kids in their parishes.

Here’s what the Church is doing in Wisconsin to make amends for distract local Catholics from the inconvenient facts about the 200 deaf children and the rape and whatnot:

Well, the Vatican has finally found it in its black (but gold-plated!) and shriveled husk of a heart to do something for Wisconsin: they’ve blessed a ghost sighting as genuine. Woo hoo! That’ll fix everything right up!

The church has declared that a sighting in 1859 of a blond Mary hovering between two trees was real and worthy, and the local Catholic church is now busily expanding their parking lot to cope with the expected influx of gullible suckers pilgrims who will flock to the site to imagine a floating cheerleader for Jesus.

No really. What had happened was:

…[O]n October 9, 1859, the Queen of Heaven manifested herself to Adele Brise in Champion (Robinsonville), Wisconsin, USA.

[...]

“As they approached the hallowed spot, Adele could see the beautiful lady, clothed in dazzling white, with a yellow sash around her waist. Her dress fell to her feet in graceful folds. She had a crown of stars around her head, and her long, golden, wavy hair fell loosely around her shoulders. Such a heavenly light shone around her that Adele could hardly look back at her sweet face. Overcome by this heavenly light and the beauty of her amiable visitor, Adele fell on her knees.

” ‘In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?’ asked Adele, as she had been directed.

“ ‘I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession, and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them’

“ ‘Adele, who is it?” said one of the women. ‘O why can’t we see her as you do?’ said another weeping.

“ ‘Kneel,’ said Adele, ‘the Lady says she is the Queen of Heaven.’ Our Blessed Lady turned, looked kindly at them, and said, ‘Blessed are they that believe without seeing. What are you doing here in idleness…while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son?’

Oh, for god’s sake. The woman was either hallucinating or lying. Or on drugs. She certainly wasn’t laying the foundations for the the Vatican to, 150 years later, distract all the faithful morons from the fact that 200 DEAF CHILDREN WERE RAPED BY A PRIEST. PZ Myers ties this little fairytale up with a bow:

That settles it. It must have been a magical manifestation if it was invisible. Invisible and blond, just like I always imagined a Middle Eastern Semitic peasant woman. And the statement that you’re blessed if you believe without seeing is pitch-perfect Catholicism.

Dear, dear Catholics: Stop. Just stop. I know many of you are fervent in your desires to change the Catholic Church from the inside out, but until and unless the entire patriarchal institution — the celibate priests, the secretive power structure, the lack of women in any positions of power, and all the rest — is changed, this will continue.

As it stands, the Church, for this and many other reasons, is one of the most evil forces on God’s Green Earth, and no one with a sense of morality or dignity should support it.

Truth Wins Out reported last week that the “ex-gay” organization Exodus International plans to target Middle School age children in 2011. In response, we revealed Exodus’ profoundly disturbing record in its work with youth. TWO also published an op-ed by Exodus Survivor Patrick McAlvey who strongly urged the discredited “ex-gay” group to stop focusing on children and teenagers.

Instead of looking at its perverse history and rethinking its dangerous 2011 strategic plan, Exodus announced this week that it was intensifying its teen and pre-teen efforts, beginning at an upcoming Exodus Leadership conference in Orlando, which is scheduled for January 24-26. According to Exodus President Alan Chambers in a flier promoting the event:

I am so excited about spending the week with you all and learning how God wants to use each of our gifts, talents, brains and uniques [sic] styles for His glory and the building of His Kingdom.  I am thrilled that our dear friend, Kathy Koch, is here to lead us, encourage us, rally us and mobilize us to reach greater heights in ministry!

Who is Kathy Koch? (Aside from someone who can’t spell in her own bio. Or maybe Exodus staff is responsible for the incompetence?)

Dr. Kathy Koch:  As the founder of Celebrate Kids, Inc., Dr. Kathy is dedicated to helping parents, educators, adn [sic] children of all ages meet their core needs of security, identity, belonging, purpose, and competence in healthy ways. She teaches these important truths nationally and internationally in various venues. Dr. Kathy is known for her down-to-earth, upbeat, humorours, [sic] and forthright style.

Wow — this is nauseating. At Exodus’ first big shindig of 2011, they bring in a speaker from a group called “Celebrate Kids, Inc.” As I have detailed, Exodus has a creepy history celebrating kids in a very unsettling way. Koch’s presence at this conference is further proof that Randy Thomas and Alan Chambers are going after vulnerable children, who may not be old enough to have the critical thinking skills to see through the group’s self-hatred and propaganda.

Perhaps LGBT activists in Florida should protest this despicable conference and save the children from the slimy clutches of Exodus.

If you have been a victim of Exodus International, please read our publication,

“Ex-Gay & the Law”.

Another man of God:

A Catholic priest, facing criminal charges and a lawsuit alleging that he sexually abused a teenage boy, is now charged with attempting to hire someone to kill the youth, authorities said Tuesday.

The Rev. John M. Fiala was in the Dallas County, Texas, jail on Tuesday, charged with one count of criminal solicitation to commit capital murder, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety and the jail’s website. He also is charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. His bail totals $700,000.

Fiala, 52, of Dallas, was out on bond on other sexual assault charges involving the youth, now 18, when he allegedly attempted to negotiate the boy’s murder, said Tom Rhodes, the teen’s attorney.

Not only that, but he’s accused of raping the teen at gunpoint! Moreover, the lawsuits state that the archdioceses and religious orders Fiala was under ALL covered up his sexual abuse.

It’s not often that the Catholic Church can shock me these days, since child rape and Catholicism are so inextricably linked in the public mind, but this one…

Damn.

[h/t John Aravosis]

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have chosen Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as president, the first to defeat a sitting vice president for the post. This is a horrible choice that will place the Catholic Church in the center of the Culture War.

Here is what the New York Times wrote:

He will become the face of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.

When public policy issues like abortion, same-sex marriage or health care cross paths with church doctrine, his will be the voice heard addressing Congressional committees. His name will be added to the speed-dial list of a platoon of church officials who work on Catholic concerns like liturgical translations and the plight of Christians in Baghdad. And all of those officials will want face time with him starting Thursday.

That is when Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York begins his three-year term as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

It is galling that a church overrun with pedophile priests is working to undermine my adult relationship. Given his church’s ghastly record of covering up child rape, I’m not sure what Dolan has to offer in terms of morality or family values. If the Roman Catholic Church wants to jump into the culture wars and be political, we must not be deferential and show them respect that they have not earned.

Each time they demean our relationships, they must be met with this refrain: “A church that covers-up child rape has no business attacking healthy relationships between consenting adults. Get out of politics and get back into parishes, where you can protect kids from pedophiles.”

The reason we must respond this way is to send the message that attacking the LGBT community and lying about our families will be a painful experience for the Catholic Church. We must fight back and remember that we have no obligation to be Timothy Dolan’s punching bag.

Bill Donohue is a sick, twisted individual.  Herein, the latest proof of that statement, as Bill Donohue explains that a young boy molested by a priest wasn’t “raped,” but merely “rubbed,” that since the abuse started when the victim was thirteen, it wasn’t pedophilia, and that really, if the victim had a problem with it, he should have said something:

On September 28, the Chicago Tribune reported that “former Chicago priest and convicted sex offender Daniel McCormick sexually abused him [Doe] while he was a grammar school student.” We then learn that the student was really a middle-school student, in the eighth grade, when the abuse began. The abuse reportedly continued for five years. According to the lawsuit, “McCormack inappropriately sexually touched, hugged, rubbed and/or abused Doe.”

It’s time to ask some tough questions. Why did this young man not object earlier? Why did he allow the “abuse” to continue until he was 18? The use of the quotes is deliberate: the charge against the former priest is not rape, but rubbing. While still objectionable, there is a glacial difference between being rubbed and raped.

Here’s what we know. We know that this case, like most of them, was the work of a homosexual, not a pedophile. And like most of the cases of priestly sexual misconduct, there was no rape involved. Inappropriate touching is morally wrong, and the offenders should be punished, but the time has come to object to all those pundits who like to say that the scandal is all about child rape. Most of the cases did not involve children—they were post-pubescent males—and most weren’t raped.

Why does this matter? Because those looking to sue the Catholic Church for being inappropriately rubbed decades ago are not exactly the poster boys for the victims of child rape. And because those who hate the Church continue to use the term child rape as a way of discrediting the Church. They lie about this being a pedophilia problem and they lie about the nature of the misconduct. That’s reason enough to call them on it.

Bill Donohue is a pig who defends rape. And yes, Bill, that is rape.  My god, what kind of moron doesn’t understand that inappropriately touching a child in any way is child rape?!  I understand why Bill Donohue is completely devoid of morality, though; he was raised under the abusive thumb of the Catholic Church, where child rape is so prevalent as to be mundane.

[h/t Kyle]

Bill Donohue, his back all up in a grumpypants huff about something George Lopez said:

No institution, religious or secular, has less of a problem with the issue of sexual abuse today than the Catholic Church.

1. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!  LOL!   *spits Diet Coke all over the computer screen laughing*

2. I cannot imagine any scenario under which something George Lopez said would compel me to write a press release.

I meant to highlight this over the weekend, but it slipped my mind.  P.Z. Myers points out a stunning finding about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Belgium:

Investigators, working with the support of the Belgian Catholic Church received 475 complaints of child abuse committed in the 1950s through to the late 1980s by Catholic clergy.

“We can say that no congregation escapes sexual abuse of minors by one or several of its members,” the commission concluded.

The 200-page report, published on Friday, contains testimonies from some 124 anonymous victims, revealing that abuse for most began at the age of 12.

It noted a “high number of suicides” with 13 deaths and six attempts attributed to “sexual abuse by a cleric”.

“We are talking here about anal and oral abuse, forced and mutual masturbation,” said Peter Adriaenssens, the psychiatric specialist in paedophilia who chaired the commission.

There’s your moral authority for the world, the Roman Catholic Church.

P.Z. sums it up:

Every congregation has a horror story about an abusive priest. That says something. This isn’t about a rare event — it’s about a common risk associated with growing up Catholic in Belgium.

Sick and scary, isn’t it? And unless further investigation reveals a nefarious Vatican plot to send all the child molesters to Belgium, it’s frightening to think what similar investigations in other nations will turn up.

Memphis’s city council is currently holding hearings on an inclusive non-discrimination ordinance which has strong support from the community.  The first hearing went a bit like this, via Bianca Phillips at The Memphis Flyer:

The ordinance’s sponsor Janis Fullilove pleaded a passionate case for equal treatment of LGBT city workers, as well as employees working for companies contracting with the city. Fullilove called the need for equality at City Hall a “human issue,” and praised FedEx for taking the lead by adopting a similar policy protecting their workers. She also addressed the concerns of some conservative Christians that a non-discrimination ordinance would allow transgender people to use restrooms for the opposite sex.

“I know there are a lot of people with concerns about people going to the restroom. But how many times do you go into a restroom and look into the stall and ask, what are you? A man or a woman?” Fullilove said.

She continued: “If you had a daughter or son who was gay, would you not want them to be able to work and support themselves?”

(…)

Supporters of the ordinance literally sat across the room from opponents of LGBT protections (many of them wearing “one man, one woman” stickers as if the discussion were about gay marriage). Tennessee Equality Project’s Jonathan Cole, whose equality organization helped draft the ordinance, spoke on behalf of the ordinance’s supporters.

“Right now, it’s totally legal for the city or someone who contracts with the city to fire someone for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender,” Cole said. Cole cited a few stories he’d heard about city employees being denied promotions and even fired after their employer learned their sexual orientation.

Following Cole, Steve Gaines, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church, spoke in opposition, but it seemed as though he didn’t fully understand the scope of the ordinance. Gaines talked as though he believed the ordinance would affect private businesses, but it actually only affects city workers and companies who contract with the city.

“What if a Christian childcare facility is forced to hire a man dressed like a woman?” Gaines asked.

Really, Bellevue Baptist Church pastor Steve Gaines?  Because I’m finding it a little bit too cute by half to believe that Gaines’ utmost concern is for the welfare of children.  Why?  From StopBaptistPredators.org:

Pastor Steve Gaines knew that one of his staff ministers had sexually abused a kid years earlier. What did he do? He kept quiet. Not until 6 months later, when the news was broken in a blog was the congregation finally informed. It was a “church matter” said the pastor, and he gave a sermon on “grace” and redemption.

For anyone who thought clergy sex abuse was “just” a Catholic problem, Bellevue should be a wake-up call.

Minister Paul Williams reported for child molestation.

He commonly counseled molestation victims, who told him their personal and painful stories.

Pastor Steve Gaines knew for 6 months and kept quiet.

Pastor Gaines calls it a “moral failure” and justifies his silence because Williams said there was “no reoccurrence.”

(…)

Seminary president urges Pastor Gaines to resign. “If Steve Gaines found out that a child had been sexually molested by one of his ministers and if he did nothing to address it, then he needs to step down immediately,” Dr. Michael Spradlin, the president of Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary said.

(…)

Deacon Michael R. Pruett urges church discipline, NOT for Pastor Gaines who kept the matter secret, but for those who brought this to light! “Where is love in all of this?” he asks. (Here’s the answer Deacon Pruett: Love resides in doing everything possible to protect the young against sexual abuse. That sort of love requires courageous truth-telling and transparency.)

(…)

Report shows that what pastor Gaines called a “moral failure” – and kept quiet about – was really minister Williams’ “egregious, perverse sexual activity with his adolescent son over a period of 12 to 18 months.”

Nice!  Pastor Gaines apparently decided to play the “It’s not child rape if he sez he only raped the boy once!” card.  It’s amazing (but strangely, not surprising) that the man the anti-gay side has chosen as a spokesperson is more concerned about hurting gay people than protecting the innocence of the children in his congregation.

Michelle Bliss was in the hearing when the pedophile-protecting Steve Gaines spoke, and, as a mother and as a citizen, she was outraged:

Dr. Gaines represented himself before the City Council as a moral authority, speaking for “people of faith.” That is outrageous. He has shown an egregious lack of respect for the members of his church, the members of this community, and the duty as a citizen under the law to report a crime. It is unfathomable that a person who has so blatantly circumvented the law in order to protect the reputation of his organization, with callous disregard for the health and safety of his church members and the community at large, should be representing the faith community in any capacity. Perhaps Dr. Gaines thinks the people of this community have forgotten about his so-called “moral failure”; I can assure him we have not. Dr. Steve Gaines did tell the truth about one thing at the Council meeting; he does NOT speak for all Christians. He does not speak with any moral authority at all. He speaks, as he has in the past, for his own twisted sense of morality, nothing more.

As in every other city, this is the quality of our opposition.  They are far too consumed with their own irrational fear and hatred of LGBT people to see that, if anything, they are the ones who are truly a threat to our children and our families.  They’re so concerned with the continuity of their bigoted, patriarchal, Iron Age narrative that they’re willing to shove anything under the rug to protect their image — even child rape!

But remember, kids:  In their world, a child is better off being raised by a biological parent who happens to be a rapist than it is to be raised by a loving, healthy, happy, invested-in-every-way gay couple.

Because that’s what they think the Bible says.

If those are “Judeo-Christian” values, we’re better off without them.

Related: In case you forgot, this is the same church that pitched a wussy little hissy fit when they found out that a softball coach on their league, which they had opened to the public, was a big scary lesbian.  It would have been fine if Steve Gaines or Paul Williams had been the coach though, because they’re good old fashioned White Heterosexual Christians, and are therefore Saved, and if Jesus forgets about their sins, then you should too.  How dare you question the patriarchy?