Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

Death of a Pervert

(Reprinted from the issue of September 4, 2003)

The murder of the defrocked priest John Geoghan, the central figure in Boston’s pedophile scandals, comes as a shocking, portentous event. Geoghan was strangled by a fellow inmate who was already serving a life sentence for murdering another homosexual. The killer had evidently planned the attack carefully.

One wonders if the wretched Geoghan, accused of molesting as many as 130 boys, had repented his sins and returned to God’s grace. He had lived a life of profound hypocrisy and cynicism for many years, and such habits are so corrosive to the conscience that genuine remorse may become difficult.

We can only hope that the shock and infamy of his downfall forced him to face himself, and that humiliation led to humility. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a criminal is getting caught.

There was a terrible fitness in his death. Like all child molesters, he lived in danger of murder during his months in prison — and he was the most notorious child molester in the United States. He had betrayed not only his direct victims, but Christ’s Church.

We should also count as his victims those who suffer at the stain he left on the priesthood; as the old saying goes, he was the type who gives the whole group a bad name. Every faithful priest must now bear the obloquy and suspicion brought on by a few rotten priests like Geoghan.

This burden has been aggravated by lax discipline, and worse, within the Church. Not only have many perverted priests been reassigned to unsuspecting parishes, rather than suspended or punished; an aggressive homosexual underworld has taken hold in many seminaries. The priesthood, like other occupations parents used to be able to trust implicitly, has actually attracted perverts who see it as providing endless opportunities to exploit the young in their care.

Media accounts of the problem define it as one of “pedophilia.” They studiously avoid the word “homosexual.” We are told that pedophiles and homosexuals are wholly distinct categories; that most pedophiles are, in fact, heterosexual. Since the great majority of men are heterosexual, this is superficially plausible.

But I no longer believe it. The other word that inevitably occurs in these scandals is “boys.” Only a few have involved girls, particularly small girls. There is some connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

On this score, the media have conducted their own cover-up, ignoring the participation of the North American Man/Boy Love Association in “gay” events. The homosexual movement insists it has nothing to do with pedophilia, but where is its emphatic repudiation of sex with boys?.
 
Candor, Anyone?

In an age that prides itself on “candor” about sex, we have seen the emergence of new forms of hypocrisy, as well as new taboos on frank discussion. Liberals sneer at the phrase “the homosexual agenda,” as if there were no such thing — even as that agenda extends to demands for “same-sex marriage”!

I’m a little puzzled by the passion this issue excites, since “same-sex marriage” is literally nonsense. Lincoln is said to have asked, “How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg?” Answer: “Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” In the same way, calling a homosexual union a marriage doesn’t make it a marriage.

Even societies that tolerate sodomy have seldom if ever seen any reason to treat such unions as marriages. The practical reason for marriage has always been the breeding and upbringing of children. Even most homosexuals have always understood that. Homosexuals, especially males, are notoriously promiscuous, so even if the law recognizes such unions as marriages, I doubt that many of them will choose monogamy.

Tolerance of sodomy is by no means a regular feature even of pagan societies. The ancient Greeks, contrary to what we are told, generally regarded it with disgust and punished it as a crime. Every society has some sort of sexual morality, which inevitably favors marriage and usually excludes sodomy; and even where sodomy is allowed, it’s usually between men and boys. The Roman poet Juvenal, who had seen just about everything in that swinging city, describes homosexuals in the most scathing terms.

The propaganda of perversion is forever reminding us that homosexual acts occur even in the animal kingdom. It neglects to mention, however, that these are very rare, and even then they are performed for simple relief or to assert dominance. Monogamy also occurs among many higher species of animals, but they never mate permanently with their own sex. Nature is trying to tell us something.

Obviously the call for same-sex marriage could occur only in a society that already takes marriage very lightly. Homosexuals demand it in the secure knowledge that it won’t necessarily be till death do you part. The vow isn’t really a sacred promise anymore; it’s viewed as the expression of a romantic impulse, made, so to speak, with fingers crossed.

Thanks to new adoption laws and artificial insemination, same-sex couples, homosexual and lesbian, are now having children. Again we are assured that there’s nothing to worry about. The kids will be fine, raised by two loving “parents.” Sexual child abuse will be rare.

Again a bit of skepticism is in order. At a time when the traditional family is under relentless attack and its failures are publicized and dramatized, only the hypothetical homosexual family is idealized and sentimentalized, even before the results are in.

We are told that homosexuals are as normal as you and I, though we’re also told that you and I are in pretty sad shape. It’s easy to get the impression that homosexuality is a positive qualification for marriage and parenthood.

We’ll see about that. When the children of these brave new families grow up, they’ll have some stories to tell, and the results may not quite match the rosy picture painted by the propagandists. It can be hard enough for a child to grow up in a broken home, especially when his friends and classmates all have normal families (though this is rarer and rarer); imagine growing up with two “parents” of the same sex, when the other children all have real parents.

Remind you of anything? Well, it reminds me of the early years of the “sexual revolution,” when all the propaganda heralded a new era of carefree, antiseptic sexual indulgence. That revolution has reached its dreadful fulfillment in our inner cities, where uninhibited behavior has resulted in bastardy, crime, poverty, disease, and general disorder.

Not quite the glossy ads for easy sex we were shown; now we have to talk about “safe sex,” a phrase that didn’t occur to us when sex was really safe because it was confined to marriage.

Opposite-sex marriage, that is.

Joseph Sobran