In response to an argument that atheists need to put on a happy face, Jerry Coyne demurs:
Coyne chooses an ironic role model. Milk was a notorious homosexual activist who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970's. He was murdered by a disgruntled employee in 1978 (for reasons unrelated to his sexuality), and he is esteemed highly by gay activists and the gay community.
But there was more to Milk than mere gay activism.
Milk offered runaway underage boys food and a warm place to stay as long as they had sex with him. And of course this peccadillo was and is well-known.
So why would Coyne cite a pederast who took advantage of homeless young boys as a moral hero who "called out his countrymen for misguided and harmful thinking"? Why does Coyne extol a man who took brutal advantage of young boys to satisfy his sexual cravings?
Perhaps Coyne is a forgiving sort of guy, not given to supercilious moralism.
Uh...no.
Coyne:
Yet you never hear of the intimate relationship between the gay rights movement and child sexual abuse.
Coyne, who excoriates the Catholic Church for the (rare) involvement of priests in child molestation, whitewashes a notorious child molester merely because he is a gay rights icon.
The reason that Coyne has two standards-- one for pederasts who are Catholic priests and one for pederasts who are political activists who push agendas Coyne is sympathetic to-- is that Coyne is an anti-Catholic bigot, and will smear the Church in any way he can, while he extolls pederasts who share his own views.
Making people think [atheists are] friendly and happy will not, I think, do the trick... You didn’t see Martin Luther King touting himself as “The Happy Negro” or Harvey Milk as “The Friendly Homosexual,” trying to make common cause with Anita Bryant. No, they called out their countrymen for misguided and harmful thinking. And eventually Americans realized that they were right.I couldn't care less about atheist public relations, but I do note Coyne's bizarre endorsement of Harvey Milk as a man on a par with Martin Luther King who "called out [his] countrymen for misguided and harmful thinking. And eventually Americans realized that [he was] right."
Coyne chooses an ironic role model. Milk was a notorious homosexual activist who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the 1970's. He was murdered by a disgruntled employee in 1978 (for reasons unrelated to his sexuality), and he is esteemed highly by gay activists and the gay community.
But there was more to Milk than mere gay activism.
Harvey Milk was, in fact, a pederast and a sexual predator...
One of Milk’s victims was a 16-year-old runaway from Maryland named Jack Galen McKinley. As previously mentioned, Milk had a soft spot in his, um, heart for teenage runaways. Motivated by an apparent quid pro quo of prurience, Milk plucked McKinley from the street.
Randy Shilts was a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and close friend to Harvey Milk. Though Shilts died of AIDS in 1994, he remains, even today, one of the most beloved journalists in the “LGBT” community.
Shilts was also Harvey Milk’s biographer. In his glowing book The Mayor of Castro Street, he wrote of Milk’s “relationship” with the McKinley boy: ” … Sixteen-year-old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure. … At 33, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him.”
In a sane world, of course, the only direction his “new lover” should have pulled him was toward San Quentin. But, alas, today’s America – a burgeoning relativist land of make-believe – is anything but sane.
Milk offered runaway underage boys food and a warm place to stay as long as they had sex with him. And of course this peccadillo was and is well-known.
So why would Coyne cite a pederast who took advantage of homeless young boys as a moral hero who "called out his countrymen for misguided and harmful thinking"? Why does Coyne extol a man who took brutal advantage of young boys to satisfy his sexual cravings?
Perhaps Coyne is a forgiving sort of guy, not given to supercilious moralism.
Uh...no.
Coyne:
Surprise! Catholic Church whitewashes priest pedophiliaThe homosexual movement is deeply entangled in pedophilia-- the North American Man-Boy Love Association has a long history of collaboration in the gay activism movement, and leading gay activists-- Allen Ginsberg, Harry Hay and David Thorstad-- were founding NAMBLA members.
The... things that horrified me the most (and there are many things to criticize) were... I don’t remember that society licensed the sexual abuse of children... The more I learn about the Catholic Church, the more I see that, as an institution, it’s so nefarious as to border on evil. I don’t know how more liberal or open-minded Catholics can, in good conscience, remain in the Church. Let us see if a sizable number of Catholic laypeople raise a hue and cry about this report. I doubt it.
Yet you never hear of the intimate relationship between the gay rights movement and child sexual abuse.
Coyne, who excoriates the Catholic Church for the (rare) involvement of priests in child molestation, whitewashes a notorious child molester merely because he is a gay rights icon.
The reason that Coyne has two standards-- one for pederasts who are Catholic priests and one for pederasts who are political activists who push agendas Coyne is sympathetic to-- is that Coyne is an anti-Catholic bigot, and will smear the Church in any way he can, while he extolls pederasts who share his own views.
Egnor,
ReplyDeleteJerry Coyne has a throwaway line at the end of a thread referring to Harry Milk, and you make an entire thread out of it?
You often do the same thing, writing something extremely silly at the very end, like the time you referred to an article in a newspaper discussing 'double-coding' of DNA, and stated it was evidence of Intelligent Design in nature.
It isn't. You didn't read the original article in 'Science', and you also didn't have any clue as to what it actually meant.
When Jerry Coyne was criticising the Catholic Church it was for its concealment of pedophile priests, and the habit of transferring miscreants to other dioceses, where they can continue to offend, rather than defrocking them after due process. And reporting them to the police.
bach:
DeleteThe gay rights movement is neck-deep in pedophilia. Three of the founders of the gay rights movement-- Allen Ginsberg, Harry Hay and David Thorstad-- were also founding members of NAMBLA.
Yet that fact is rarely mentioned in discussions of the gay rights movement, while the crimes of a couple percent of priests (a lower percentage than the general population) get attributed to the "priest movement"-- the Catholic Church.
How is the gay rights movements' (and their allies') coddling and coverup of the pedophilia at the core of the gay rights movement any better than the cover-ups by the Church?
For that matter, why are the innumerable cover-ups of educator child abuse by the education system not ascribed to the evil of public education. After state education is a function of the Executive Branch of the government, of which Obama is the pope (the head).
When are Obama and Ellen Degenerus going to apologize to the children who were sexually abused by educators and gay activists while they stood by in silence?
Gay-bashing, yay! Let's talk about the homosexual orgies in the Vatican. Are there any underage boys involved?
ReplyDeleteI'm bashing Coyne, not gays.
DeleteEven so. Half of your blogging is now fully dedicated to imaginary food fights with Coyne. Imaginary because Jerry ignores you for the most part.
DeleteIt's like you have a crush on Coyne.
Hoo
I find fisking to be an effective way to examine opinions. The other miscreants (Novella, Orac, Myers, Dunford, etc) have become a lot less interesting to fisk, because they've stopped saying the sorts of stupid atheist things that make fisking so effective.
DeleteCoyne is the exception. He's a fisker's feast.
Egnor: I find fisking to be an effective way to examine opinions.
DeleteWhat you call "fisking" is really a knee-jerk reaction. It requires no input from the frontal cortex.
Step away from the keyboard, Egnor. You are doing yourself a disservice by putting out not even half-baked posts, day after day.
Hoo
I, for one, enjoy reading your posts, Doc. Especially the politically incorrect stuff. This is one of them.
DeleteKeep em coming.
Aim for the lowest common denominator!
DeleteHoo
Hoo,
DeleteLow? I suppose that is a matter of perspective. I may indeed look 'low' to those looking down from the ivory towers of the academe.
We must look positively Earthbound.
From those heights we bloody, rude brutes must look Morlock-like; at least to the Eloi.
Of course, down he we prefer to call it 'Feet firmly on the ground', that kind of thing. A far more flattering (and appetizing!) perspective.
Us earth dwellers often wonder at the strange (in this case, sexual) license extended to people within certain politically popular movements.
Why Milk gets a free pass for sleeping with teen boys is not a moral question, is it? Nor is it even an legal one, at least these days. In most jurisdictions the age of 16 is above the age of consent.
It is a political one.
Coyne's outrage is limited to those people who find themselves on 'the other side' of his personal ideological divide.
"Even so. Half of your blogging is now fully dedicated to imaginary food fights with Coyne. Imaginary because Jerry ignores you for the most part.
DeleteIt's like you have a crush on Coyne.
Hoo"
Goodness, Hoo. Half your day seems to be fully dedicated to worthless snarking in Egnor's comment section.
It's like you have a crush on Egnor.
I’m sure Milk’s “peccadillo was and is well known” primarily by gay bashing bigots at the ready to attack at the mere mention of this gay icon.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between Harvey Milk and the typical Gay predator Priest is that Milk formed a relationship with a troubled boy who was already out on his own, while Catholic priests victimize boys who are sent to the church by loving parents who trusted the Church based on the Churches long standing claims of moral virtue and authority. Milk never pretended to be anything other than what he is, while the closeted pedophiles of the Catholic Church could count on the entire organization to cover-up their hypocrisy and conveniently move them to find fresh batches of victims when the inevitable complaints began to surface.
-KW
KW:
DeleteYou're defending pederasty?
Surely one can form a relationship with a troubled boy that does not involve anal penetration. Parents and guidance counselors and siblings and friends and countless concerned people form non-sexual relationships with troubled kids all the time.
Do you consider anal sex an acceptable part of a relationship with a child?
What KW seems to be suggesting is that A) it is more acceptable to bugger teen age runaways than those from loving homes and that B) priests are worse than Milk because they have taken vows against all such lustful behaviour, where as Milk was actively endorsing for the normalization of sexual deviances.
DeleteThat about right, KW?
Mike, it’s interesting to know that your think Milk should be in San Quentin, while over the years I’ve never heard you say that about any Catholic Priest. While Milk’s relationship may or may not have been statutory rape depending on the local laws of the time, it’s clearly not in the same league as the systematic rape – rape cover-up of the Catholic Church. I was thinking it interesting that you hold Catholic priests to the same standard as gay activists, but then I realized you don’t, you actually lower the bar for the priests, defending the institution that defends pedophile rapists over and over again.
DeleteYes Crusader, it’s more acceptable to bugger a 16 year old in an open consensual loving relationship after rescuing them from the streets because their bigot parents turn them out than it is to bugger a steady stream of non-consensual victims, the majority of whom where between the ages of 11 and 14, with some as young as 3.
-KW
KW:
DeleteI didn't say Milk should be in San Quentin. I quoted a source that suggested that, but I am making no assertions here regarding the legal approach to pederasty. I think that sexual assault should be punished under law, but I believe that we have segued into a "witchhunt" mentality on these issues in some respects. I think that some sexual abuse prosecutions have been brutal miscarriages of justice (particularly the day-care scandals, where the defendants have largely been innocent). I also think that the lifetime labeling of a sexual offender is often very unjust and cruel. People who commit crimes should be able to serve their sentences and go about their lives without having to wear a scarlet letter. Adultery and divorce harm orders of magnitude more children than sexual predators do, but we extol infidelity.
Sex offenders should be punished, without question, but we should avoid Calvinist extremism and we should remember that there are all sorts of things that are catastrophic to kids, such as breakup of families due to sexual adventurism, which are sanctioned in our culture.
This post criticizes Coyne as a hypocrite who excoriates priests and the Church while excusing pederasts who are in the gay rights movement.
This post is about anti-Catholic bigotry, not pederasts.
Egnor: This post is about anti-Catholic bigotry, not pederasts.
DeleteNo, this post is about pederasts. Harvey Milk, specifically. Which was a throw-away line in Jerry Coyne's post that you were "fisking."
As always, this thread has degenerated into whining about the war on Christians. What a pitiful little man you are, Egnor.
Hoo
Being outraged by the hypocrisy of the church and the way the church as an institution handled its sex abuse scandal isn’t bigotry. Calling Coyne a hypocrite and bigot because he lauded Milk despite a detail of Milk’s life he was probably unaware of is a stretch.
Delete-KW
KW,
DeleteSo it's okay 'to bugger a 16 year old in an open consensual loving relationship'?
Okay. Just wanted to clarify your position on sodomizing teen runaways.
Milk and MLK?
ReplyDeleteCoyne really is scraping the bottom of the stupid trough.
Coyne, a "scientist", should look at some actual research. If he did, instead of just spouting his ignorant biases, he would find that the "The more he learns about the Public Schools, the more he would see that, as an institution, it’s so nefarious as to border on evil. He wouldn't know how more liberal or open-minded parents can, in good conscience, leave their children in the clutches of the Public Schools"
ReplyDeleteThe most comprehensive analysis of child sexual abuse in schools is the report issued by the US Department of Education, Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature.
The author of that document, Carol Shakeshaft (Hofstra University), reports that the most accurate extant data is the data collected and published by the American Association of University Women (not affiliated with the Discovery Institute). The AAUW study estimates that
nearly 9.6 percent of students are targets of educator sexual misconduct sometime during their school career
--- Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature (Sec. 3.2)
That percentage is far, far beyond even the most wild-eyed estimates of priestly abuse in the Catholic Church.
Assuming that blindfool's claim that a condemnation of "concealment" was actually Coyne's point (which is wasn't, on a plain reading), the DoE report has this interesting conclusions:
teacher unions: "There is no research that documents teacher union attempts to identify predators among their members." (Sec 11.1)
professional organizations: "[I did not] find evidence that professional organizations for teachers have addressed the topic for their members." (Sec 11.2)
And to put the [ahem] cherry on top,
Los Angeles schools chief John Deasy blasted state lawmakers Thursday for not passing a bill to speed up the teacher-dismissal process, which he and others pushed following the sex-abuse scandal at Miramonte Elementary School.
The bill fell one vote short of clearing an Assembly education committee when six of the seven Democratic members either opposed it or abstained. Committee Chairwoman Julia Brownley (D-Oak Park) supported the bill, as did four Republican colleagues...
The bill was vehemently opposed by the California Teachers Assn., United Teachers Los Angeles and other labor unions, which called it an attack on due process rights.
--- LATimes (6/29/2012)
And I won't even start on the Penn State coverup by university officials. Lashing out at the Catholic Church for the sexual abuse problem isn't going to work anymore. Democrats and Progressives are clearly on the side of the pedophiles.
Progressives and atheists should cast out the beam from their own eye.
Lashing out at the Catholic Church for the sexual abuse problem isn't going to work anymore.
DeleteNah, Admiral-without-a-legacy. It's going to keep on working just fine.
Thanks for exposing Coyne anti Catholic bigot. It's scary how some atheists think.
ReplyDeleteJerry : Lets go camping, El Booto.
El Booto: Great, where?
Jerry : Brokeback Mountain.
El Booto : Noooo, I'm not going!!
Eugen, the last thing you’ll ever get from Egnor is an accurate indication of how atheists think. If you believe that this thin gruel exposes Coyne as a bigot, because somehow a relatively obscure detail of a relatively obscure public figure’s biography should be given the same weight as the multi decadal global pedophile priest scandal, then you’re being willfully deceived. Pull your head out of Egnor’s ass before it’s too late!
Delete-KW
*Pull your head out of Egnor’s ass before it’s too late!*
ReplyDeleteNo worries Kid Wallace, I'm using a snorkel.
Coyne also called Catholics a hate group recently. He doesn't seem reasonable or moderate when talking about religions. That attitude helps alienate atheists from moderately religious people who care to follow these discussions. Atheists ideas already seem strange to majority of regular people. Just read Peter Singer's write up on goats etc., from Admiral's comment couple of days ago.
A straight man has been discovered in the Vatican! Well, he used to work in to Vatican until he got sick and tired of the constant sexual advances by cardinals, bishops and priests. Linky
ReplyDeleteSeriously, are there any straight Catholic clergy in the Vatican at all? The Vatican is the only gay club in the world that is also a country.