Political Corruption, Media, and Religion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/top10/06/262_foley.pdf

The Republicans and the Christian right have serious issues with sexual abuse, but is the media to blame for letting them "off the hook?"

Rep. Mark Foley of Florida discussed “masturbation” and “fetishes” with a teenage kid over the last year which is one example of Conservative sexually abusing children. The persistence of Rep. Foley to encourage details of the teenager’s fetish’s and masturbation techniques are “sick” and “twisted,” but this seems to be a common trend among Conservatives.

Among these Conservatives are the Christian Rights priests who sexually devastated and ravished the Catholic Church teenage boys in an eye-opening shockwave of the papal authority and corruption. What happened to those priests and victims? Searching yields very small results and the validity of the documents are in question, but what happened to “the biggest organized crime cover-up in 25 years?”

It seems the Religious authority and the Catholic Church was able to silence the scandal within months of it hitting the airwaves.

National Catholic Reporter on May 24th, 1996, Tom Robers said, “Catholic church in the United States, little has been done to bridge the gap between church critics who blame the institution for covering up a crisis and harboring child molesters and those who insist that the issue has been blown out of proportion by the media”.

Nothing was done.

“Sexual crimes taint papacy: bishops with a history of sheltering priests who molested children, will forever taint John Paul II's legacy as a great leader. The next pope must forthrightly confront such church sex scandals”

- -Catholic New Times, April 24, 2005 by Jason Berry

It wasn't until 6-8 years later until the damage of innocent children did the media cover it nationally.

In contrast, it took 6-8 years to gain attention to innocent children being sexually abused, but it took months to report about a consensual relationship.

The media from an angle seems to be controlled by the Catholic Church, which is very dangerous because of a sweeping conservative attitude. An attitude more apparent with the Monica Lewinsky affair and the complete lambaste and investigations sought in a matter of months. In fact, more money was used on Ken Starr’s investigation then on Sexual Abuse by Priests and Mad Cow Disease.

The Democrats have been quick to try and use this issue for political gain. D-Rep. Nancy Pelosi has called for an investigation, “who knew what and when” The investigation; however, will do no good because it will end up being a lot of finger pointing. The media and the conservative attitude will probably cover this scandal up within months. Perhaps, this event will have some Christian Right voters thinking come election time.

In the end, People blame the media for being to anti-catholic, but this is hard to swallow because one would believe that if someone reported wide scale sexual abuse in the Catholic Church the media would be all over it. The Conservative culture seems hypocritical between family values, fair and balanced news coverage and there actions.