Pope Benedict, accused by victims' lawyers of being ultimately responsible for an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state, a top Vatican legal official said on Thursday.
The interview with Giuseppe dalla Torre, head of the Vatican's tribunal, was published in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper... Dalla Torre outlined the Vatican's strategy to defend the pope from being forced to testify in several lawsuits concerning sexual abuse which are currently moving through the U.S. legal system.
"The pope is certainly a head of state, who has the same juridical status as all heads of state," he said, arguing he therefore had immunity from foreign courts.
Lawyers representing victims of sexual abuse by priests in several cases in the United States have said they would want the pope to testify in an attempt to try to prove the Vatican was negligent.
But the pope is protected by diplomatic immunity because more than 170 countries, including the United States, have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. They recognize it as a sovereign state and the pope as its sovereign head.
..."The Church is not a multi-national corporation," dalla Torre said. "He has (spiritual) primacy over the Church ... but every bishop is legally responsible for running a diocese."
Well, isn't that delightfully convenient?
It's so awesome how the biggest organization in the world ostensibly tasked with human accountability, of which confession for wrongdoing has been made a ritualistic centerpiece, has cloaked itself behind so many layers of Super Specialness—We're a religious institution! We're a sovereign state! Our leader is also a head of state with diplomatic immunity! Our real business is making money, but we're not a corporation!—that countless survivors of institutional sex abuse abetted by the Super Special Organization can neither get justice, nor hold accountable the chief abettor, nor even insist on fundamental changes to ensure as best as possible that no further victims are created.
Amazing.
I love how Giuseppe dalla Torre, head of the Vatican's tribunal (LOL the Vatican's "tribunal," which is probably a bathhouse with jewel-encrusted tubs where Vatican officials sit around laughing about what a stroke of genius the whole becoming-a-sovereign-state scheme was), took a moment to note that the Catholic Church "is not a multi-national corporation." In case no one had noticed.
Q: Besides NOT PAYING TAXES, how can you tell the Church isn't a multi-national corporation?
A: If Microsoft, say, were discovered to have been covering up an international child rape ring among its ranks for (at least) decades, and Bill Gates were discovered to have authored a letter ordering members of his organization to keep it secret, and the Dublin office had been discovered to be conspiring with police to hide evidence and silence survivors, and employees who had been identified as child rapists were just moved to other offices, like pedophilia is all about location location location! and because the organization's reputation is more important than protecting children from known rapists, and Microsoft spent more time deflecting responsibility and blaming its gay employees (FOR FUCK'S SAKE) for the crimes committed by the sexual predators the organization had abetted and protected...Microsoft would be OUT OF FUCKING BUSINESS.
Because no one would be making any goddamn excuses for any multi-national corporation, no matter how much other "good stuff" they'd allegedly done, if that organization had been found to be disproportionately staffed with men eminently capable of committing or concealing child rape, corruptible from guy in the local franchise straight to the CEO at the top.
That corporation would be DONE.
But claim to have a direct line to God, and suddenly everything's different.
That is Christian privilege of almost inconceivable proportions, right there: As long as you assert a belief in divine justice, you're more likely to escape human justice.
It's a particularly cruel irony that those who assert moral authority are given the most latitude to behave in immoral ways without the inconvenient bother of being held accountable for their crimes.
And when people who are decidedly unthrilled about the privilege conferred upon religious institutions, particularly in the midst of a worldwide crisis of sexual assault in which countless children have been victimized, challenge this privilege, they are dismissed as bigots, as wanton haters of the Church, or its adherents, or its doctrine—as if there is not a preponderance of evidence to warrant legitimate criticism, as if they are being unfair, as if standing up for children, vociferously and unyieldingly and despite knowing the shitstorm of accusations of bigotry to come, is somehow evidence of a "real" moral failing.
As if compassion for countless children being sexually assaulted is just a convenient excuse to criticize the Church used by atheists and secularists and feminists and other nefarious types.
That is an accusation I have received repeatedly in my inbox from self-identified Catholics: "You must love the pedophile scandal because it gives you an excuse to bash the Church," they tell me. It takes my breath away every time. So divorced from compassion for survivors, they can conceive only that I have an irrational hatred I (further) exploit survivors to wield, rather than imagine the thought of institutionalized child rape enrages me all its own, that it is inherently contemptible.
That a survivor of sexual assault, who writes endlessly about the rape culture and its purveyors, even (and especially) when it's a fallen hero, can be readily cast as the scoundrel with an agenda for being critical of the largest-scale institutional sex abuse crisis in recorded history, pretty much says everything that needs to be said about this situation and the enormous, fucked-up privilege at work here.
Except, perhaps, this: The Pope has immunity. And he's invoking it.
A urologist in Mount Dora, Florida, has posted a sign on his office door telling patients who voted for President Obama to take their business elsewhere.
"I'm not turning anybody away — that would be unethical," Dr. Jack Cassell, 56, a Mount Dora urologist and a registered Republican opposed to the health plan, told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."
The sign reads: "If you voted for Obama … seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."
Doctors are entitled to their right of free speech and free association, just like anyone else. But I would also call into question his judgment and maturity as a person and as a practitioner if he is so petulant about his politics that he has to post them on his office door.
Scott Roeder, the antiabortion extremist who murdered George Tiller, one of the handful of American physicians who performed late-term abortions, was sentenced to life in prison in a Wichita, Kan., courtroom Thursday and will not be eligible for parole for more than 50 years.
"The blood of babies is on your hands!" he yelled at prosecutors as bailiffs led him from the courtroom.
Pursuant to previous letter, please immediately cease all use of the word "emotional" wherein its application is intended to be synonymous with hysterical, irrational, overwrought, or some other word traditionally used to dismiss women who are rightfully angry about, upset by, or contemptuous of misogynistic behavior.
Using "emotional" as a dog-whistle to marginalize women's concerns—or the concerns of any other non-privileged group, for that matter—doesn't make you better than overt misogynists who call women hysterics, and you're really not fooling anybody.
Implicitly juxtaposing "emotion" against "reason/rationality" treats the two as mutually exclusive processes, which they are not. The human response to many things is both emotional and rational/reasoned.
The damnable lie that reason without emotion is the only reasoning worth shit is one of the most pernicious myths of the Patriarchy, inextricably tied to the woman- and man-hating presumption that women are emotional and men are reasonable (and thus is reason superior to emotion).
Men are emotional creatures as much as are women.
And every man I've ever heard deny that truth has spent no small amount of his life living and dying by the fortunes of his favorite Ballsport Team.
The exhortation to extricate emotion from reason, commonly wielded against women to dismiss their rightful ire at the manifestations of their oppression, is as unrealistic and dishonest as it is a contemptible pile of fetid, stinking rubbish.
"Bitching," as a synonym for "complaining," is misogynistic bullshit. Women—and the feminine men you also like to call "bitches"—are not the only human beings who complain.
There are, literally, dozens of appropriate words available for your use to convey the same idea—complain, whine, grumble, moan, grouse, groan, whinge, gripe, object, bellyache, bother, fuss, yap, wail, etc.—that do not unavoidably smear feminine-identified people by necessarily implying that they've got the market cornered on complaining.
By necessarily implying that bitches bitch while men endure.
Shaker babydyke forwarded the below video of a great counter-protest staged by a group of students from Bay Area Gunn High School, which was recently chosen as the site of a protest by the odious Westboro Baptist Church clan, who really just need to give it the fuck up already. Enjoy!
[Transcript provided courtesy of Quixotess is below. Thanks, Q!]
[Opening shot of one of those changing signs; under "GUNN HIGH SCHOOL" the changing sign says "The highest result of education... / ...is tolerance. / Gunn High School / Celebrating Diversity." Students singing "This Little Light of Mine."]
Cat, Gunn High School student: Today, the WBC came to our school to protest sort of our acceptance and the fact that we are a really accepting school.
Daisy Renazco, Gunn High School teacher: "Who is this group that's coming?" and I realized, "Oh my god, it's Fred Phelps." And my heart just dropped. I can't believe they're coming. Like, why us? Of all the schools, why us?
[Text on screen: A Kansas hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church announced it would picket at Bay Area schools and Jewish institutions.]
Daisy Renazco: I knew there was a planning meeting that was happening, so I kind of sent my thoughts to him, saying "I understand that the best response is no response sometimes. But for my students, if they want to go and respond in some sort of peaceful way, I want to support them en that, and hopefully you guys would be okay with that." And they were great. The administration's been super-supportive.
Cat: There was--one person said that it would be a really good idea if there was just nobody there, and if it was just this barren school, and "we're just not going to listen to you." And that would have been really effective, and it would have been really cool, but we decided that realistically wasn't going to happen. Because when we walked out there this morning, we were expecting to see a handful of people out there, but there were like--oh my god, it was just covered in people, right across the street!
[Many members of the Gunn community outside protesting. We can see their signs: Legalize gay!, Love thy neighbor, Moms (heart) our kids (heart) Gunn (heart), Leave our kids alone.]
Daisy Renazco: So the Westboro Baptist Church came this morning, and they picketed right across our street [she points; there are a couple dozen protestors on that side of the street]. So as a community, we decided to come, have signs and songs to kind of show our love for each other. [Many, many people counterprotesting. The lopsidedness of the numbers is obvious; there are probably hundreds of people here. Signs say Gunn Cares, God is love.] We're here, and no matter who you are, we still love you.
Ria, Gunn High School student: I am so glad that this worked out. It's not violent or anything.
Will, Gunn High School Student: And, uh, this is basically just meant to demonstrate that Gunn is a loving and accepting place. [Sign: Love is free.]
Daisy Renazco [as students sing in the background]: The Gay-Straight Alliance, actually, once they found out, they actually set up a Facebook group. And they invited all their friends from all schools in the Bay area, and started the conversation that way online. [WBC signs: Fags are beasts, America is doomed, God hates Obama, etc.] And they decided as a group that they wanted to sing, [Gunn sign: Love thy neighbor] and when the administration talked about planning a lunchtime activity, they said "Great, we'll go out, we'll sing there too." So they really have stepped up and taken a lead role and set the tone for the campus.]
Noreen Likins, Gunn High School Principal: What we've done as a community is I think really talk about this ahead of time. With an assembly on Tuesday I was able to actually talk to all of the students about what to expect, what kind of organization they were looking to come here. And I think that has given them time to process and time to think about it in a way that, if it had just been sprung upon them, it would have been hard. I'm very, very proud of the kids. They did a super job. [Sign: All you need is love.]
Student [at microphone, addressing the crowd of students outside]: Thank you so much for coming out and supporting your fellow students, trying to create a sense of community. [Students applaud and cheer.]
[Two students at microphones, with sheet music & music stands, singing "Let it Be."]
Daisy Renazco: So I think what really affirmed today is what a positive environment we have at Gunn [Student's shirt says "Gay? fine by me."] and how accepting everyone is. And, you know, I feel like a lot of people say the word "tolerance," but, you know, that's not true. We don't tolerate each other, we actually accept each other. [Students, including Cat, playing bongos & guitar and singing "Lean on Me."
Cat: I am so proud to be a Gunn student, every day, but especially today. [Student adds to a board of sticky notes saying things like Gunn is love!, :D, Love = music Gunn coffee, The point of LOVE is to love everyone.] Really, the support was amazing. [Sticky notes: HOPE, love laugh love. Students singing "We Shall Overcome."]
[Gunn High School changing sign: "Not in our schools...Not in our Town." End card: NOT IN OUR TOWN / www.niot.org / copyright The Working Group.]
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
…is "edgy" April Fool's Day pranks by smug hipster assholes.
[Trigger warning.] So, the totes high-larious group "Improv Everywhere," who stage awesome comedy "missions" in public venues, such as their annual "No Pants Subway Ride" (really) posted a video and images yesterday of their "No Underwear Subway Ride."
Text Onscreen: Improv Everywhere.
White guy with bullhorn, appearing to speak to a crowd of people gathered in New York City: Thanks, everybody, for coming out to the "No Underwear Subway Ride." [crowd cheers] For today's mission, we're gonna be going down into the subway; we're gonna be spreading out on several different cars, several different trains; at the same time, we are all going to be removing our pants and then removing our underwear. We want it to be a funny thing, we want it to be a positive thing, so please be as respectful as you possibly can. When the train gets crowded, you know, make sure you don't rub your genitals right up next to somebody else. It's not illegal to be completely naked in the New York City subway system, as far as we know… Everybody ready to take their underwear off? [crowd cheers]
[The rest is video set to dance music, the only lyrics accompanying which is a female voice repeatedly saying, "Hello Everyone." We see the crowd walking down stairs into the subway, then various men and women getting on trains and removing their pants and ostensibly their underwear, sitting on seats, standing in front of other passengers, etc.—as well as passenger reaction shots. Some people laugh uncomfortably, some people look scared, some look away, some stare, some move away. The genital areas of the participants are pixilated throughout the video.]
Only it wasn't real…? Because they were supposedly wearing flesh-colored underwear…? So the prank isn't that they were naked on the subway…? The prank is actually that they made people think they were naked on the subway…?
Ha ha…?
And now the thread at their place is full of people who are understandably disturbed by the notion that there's nothing wrong with exposing your genitals on the subway (as long as you're "as respectful as you possibly can" be about it), and people who are contemptuously mocking anyone who was TOO STUPID AND UNHIP HAR HAR to get the irony and actually fell for the prank.
Well, I got the goddamn "joke," but I fail utterly to see what's amusing about treating sexual assault on the subway as a punchline, when female commuters (in particular) are ubiquitously harassed by opportunistic predators who expose themselves, grab breasts, buttocks, and/or genitals, and use the motion and capacity of public transit as a cover for nonconsensual frottage. Check out the number of times "bus" or "train" etc. come up in the Survivor Thread and the Right to Go Out Thread, if you've any reservations about the prevalence of this form of assault.
This might—might—have been funny in a world in which sexual terrorism on public transportation isn't a real, serious, and pervasive problem.
But that is not the world in which we live.
In the world we live in, treating one of the most endemic forms of sexual assault or harassment as a subject ripe for a zany prank—and shaming people who don't see the alleged humor—is just another irresponsible and tiresome perpetuation of the rape culture.
Gentle readers, I confess that as I write to you today, my breast is swollen with pride at the ingenuity of Man. Not one hour ago, I arrived home on my velocipede after a brief sojourn at the local dram shop. Imagine my choler when I discovered my niece Eugenie, now on spring holiday from Miss Phyllida X. Catchpole’s Academy for Shallow Breathing, achortle like a madwoman in an attic at the web-window on her foldable traveling Babbage engine device! Naturally I sent the girlchild to her room so that her delicate organ of thought could recover in that environment, whose anodyne yellow wall coverings were selected especially to soothe the womb-fevered faculties. No sooner had I pocketed the room-key than my eyes grew wide as whiskey barrels at this sockdologer of an e-newsey, penned by one Ed Yong.
Now, I have long held natural philosophy scriveners to be jackanapeses and charlatans of the first water. But surely no more so than the natural philosophers themselves, who purport to instruct me in the betterment of Man. I find that taking the waters at Banff with my faithful yeoman Bruce and the occasional dose of a good arsenic tonic are all I need to maintain the manly vigor of my constitution and the punctiliousness of my daily bowel habit.
It is one thing to observe, for example, the salutary effects of sassafras on Carbunculoles of Weymouth. However, too much of natural philosophy consists in pointless exercises such as those of that long-tressed Dutchman, counting the animalcules in a drop of water. Or the endeavors of that honey-fuggler Isaac Newton, cosseted in a dark room in a plague-ridden city for weeks, poking himself in the eye with a wooden stick!
So you may ken, dear readers, that I count myself no friend of natural philosophers and their scriveners and scribblers. But this Ed Yong gentleman has knocked me into a cocked hat! Here, at long last, is some information of use to the common Man in his daily activities. And, not surprisingly, it confirms what we Thinking Gentlemen have suspected all along: the organ of cogitation contains a soft spot that renders some more vulnerable to shecoonery!
Scientists have discovered the part of the brain that makes people gullible, it was claimed today. The findings could have massive implications for treating the growing number of people who fall wide-eyed for sensationalist media reports.
And naturally, the fair sex—the Angels of the House—are softer still:
The fMRI scans also revealed that the supra-credulus was more active in the brains of women than in men. Evolutionary psychologist Stephan Koogin, who also worked on the study, thinks he knows why.
“Picture, if you will, a group of Pleistocene-Americans. The men are out hunting for mammoths and bears, and they can’t afford to be fooled by fake tracks. The women stayed at home picking berries or something, and they needed to tell each other far-fetched stories to keep each other entertained, because berries are really boring. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Assuming all of this is true, and who’s to say it isn’t, I’m right.”
Right you are indeed, sir—who's to say it isn't? These Men of Science are finally beginning to see common reason! If I had spent the entirety of my pre-history seated by some bucolic trace, gorging myself on saskatoons, I too would no doubt have lost the burliness of my critical faculties. It is no wonder that poor Eugenie laughed.
And so it is that I, a proud Skeptic, inscribe this encomium to natural philosophy and to its scrivener Ed Yong. Bully for you, Sir, and Bully for Science!
If you're Danell Griego, of Belen, New Mexico, the answer to that would be Mary holding Jesus (two holy folks!):
In their marble shower is an image that they believe is of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus after he is taken down from the cross.
"We built the house a couple years ago, and we have a stand in the shower and a jacuzzi tub in the master bath," said Danell Griego, the person who discovered the figure. "We also have a hot tub right outside the master bathroom, so we had not used the tub. I decided I was going to try out the tub since it had been sitting there unused for so long. I got the water and bubbles ready, hopped in and was relaxing and decided to light a candle. When I reached over to grab the candle, right behind it was the image."
Griego barely knew what to do.
"It startled me at first," said Griego. "The image was plain as day. I jumped out of the tub and called for my husband and kids to come and see if they saw what I was seeing. They saw it immediately, all of my family and neighbors also saw it immediately."
March 28 issue of The Sunday Times, London, featuring Roman Polanski. The headline reads: "Not many directors can tell you what it is like to be SHOT AT."
You're right.
Not many directors can tell you what it is like to be shot at.
But you know what?
Many, many, many women can tell you what it is like to be raped.
And they are not getting front page covers of The Times.
It's my pleasure to present Brad Smith, an absolute genius who recreated Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon as an 8-bit masterpiece. The YouTube above covers the first three tracks (Speak to Me / Breathe / On the Run). You can download all of the MP3s here.
So. There's this big article in the New York Times magazine called "Can Animals Be Gay?" And it's…interesting.
I won't spend a huge amount of time sharing my thoughts, because I primarily just wanted to point to point to the article and open it up for discussion. But, briefly, here are four things I noticed and wanted to mention:
1. "Being gay" and "engaging in homosexual sex" are, at some points, treated as the same thing, and, at others, treated as two separate things. I was reminded of Mustang Bobby's old post, "He's Not gay," which explains, essentially, that "gay" is cultural and "homosexual" is behavioral. Which is not to say that non-human animals can't be culturally gay (or that they can be), but only to say that the question serving as the article's title can't be answered without first making that distinction—something most biologists who resist anthropomorphizing animals are probably loath to do.
2. Although the biologist with whom the author spends time in the field, looking at same-sex paired albatrosses, carefully explains that identifiable rape exists within the species and is distinguishable from consensual mating, the author nonetheless fails to make any distinction between what might be more accurately defined as rape and consensual mating when referencing "same-sex sexual activity" in other species:
Various forms of same-sex sexual activity have been recorded in more than 450 different species of animals by now, from flamingos to bison to beetles to guppies to warthogs. A female koala might force another female against a tree and mount her, while throwing back her head and releasing what one scientist described as "exhalated belchlike sounds." Male Amazon River dolphins have been known to penetrate each other in the blowhole.
3. Despite the above failure, there's some very good stuff in the article about the history of humans imposing their own biases on their non-human animal subjects. For example:
"There is still an overall presumption of heterosexuality," the biologist Bruce Bagemihl told me. "Individuals, populations or species are considered to be entirely heterosexual until proven otherwise." While this may sound like a reasonable starting point, Bagemihl calls it a "heterosexist bias" and has shown it to be a significant roadblock to understanding the diversity of what animals actually do. In 1999, Bagemihl published "Biological Exuberance," a book that pulled together a colossal amount of previous piecemeal research and showed how biologists' biases had marginalized animal homosexuality for the last 150 years — sometimes innocently enough, sometimes in an eruption of anthropomorphic disgust.
Courtship behaviors between two animals of the same sex were persistently described in the literature as "mock" or "pseudo" courtship — or just "practice." Homosexual sex between ostriches was interpreted by one scientist as "a nuisance" that "goes on and on." One man, studying Mazarine Blue butterflies in Morocco in 1987, regretted having to report "the lurid details of declining moral standards and of horrific sexual offenses" which are "all too often packed" into national newspapers. And a bighorn-sheep biologist confessed in his memoir, "I still cringe at the memory of seeing old D-ram mount S-ram repeatedly." To think, he wrote, "of those magnificent beasts as 'queers' — Oh, God!"
Bagemihl is quoted in the piece noting that LGB people are "often better equipped to detect heterosexist bias when investigating the subject simply because we encounter it so frequently in our everyday lives," which I absolutely believe—and I'm pleased to see in the Times the idea that bias can be objectively determined, particularly by targets of a specific bias who develop by circumstance expertise in its expression.
4. And, on the flipside of that, we have an example of how, despite sensitivity to one bias, one may yet remain insensitive to others: Canadian primatologist and evolutionary psychologist Paul Vasey, who is gay, describes himself (no doubt quite rightly) as "more sensitive" to the way the world is organized, in terms of sexuality and the imperatives that shape its spectrum. And yet:
The point of heterosexual sex, Vasey said, no matter what kind of animal is doing it, is primarily reproduction.
Except, of course, for all the human animals for whom reproduction will never, ever, be the point of heterosexual sex.
It's surprising how many male biologists I've seen treat heterosexual (and bisexual but opposite-sex partnered) humans who fuck exclusively for pleasure as a rare anomaly, especially when I don't believe I've ever seen a female biologist do the same. (Which doesn't mean it hasn't happened.) And I suspect that it is, in part, because of the intractable assumption that male humans (of any orientation) are driven by an urge to "spread their seed," and because female human sexuality is regarded as passive, if it's regarded at all.
When women's sexual agency is ignored, and human sexuality is defined on the narratives for male humans, it's easy to see why someone might mistakenly assert that the point of heterosexual sex is primarily reproduction—despite the many heterosexual humans for whom the potential for reproduction is little more than unfortunate side effect of an otherwise fun activity.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
