Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Religion and Philosophy What about the latest Catholic Church fiasco in France?

Now, can some claim a woman using a man's obvious excitement for her benefit, be considered rape? Can an unwilling male be raped, even if his organ is saying yes, and the woman uses it as a device for self-gratification?

There is such a scenario in the Bible of all places when Lot's two daughters "raped" their own drunk father in a cave: Genesis 19:30-35

Rick - the first scenario is clearly defined in the link I provided. And all kinds of unlikely things are described in the Bible; we don’t feel the need to legislate arks.

“Rick - there is no mention in the DOJ definition of sexual gratification.

My bad. My assumption that sexual gratification was one of the vehicles which produced samples to collect evidence from the victim.

Let me see if I can explain what I’m thinking.

This thread started with the report of over 200,000 children - 80% of them boys - molested since 1950 by men in positions of trust - in fact, men in positions of authority unquestionable by Catholic children. Your - that is, most of you - reacted with “wink wink nudge nudge” questions about whether or not the children liked it. They must have, or why didn’t they report it?

And reactions like that are a very good reason nothing was done.

While we’re talking about reporting it, let me tell you a story. When I-was in my early 20s I administered a federal grant at a Catholic college. Our primary grant authority (president of another college) called a probable fraud to my attention, and suggested I quit my job before I ended up being hit with federal charges and possible prison time.

I couldn’t afford to quit my job.I went to a nun who had previously held my job. She confirmed what I already knew - I had to go to the bishop, who oversaw the college.

I was a pretty non-active Catholic by then, but this man was a) physically huge, and b) a bishop? I had never spoken to a church official at that level before. I was, I think, 24 years old.

His response to my story and and accompanying proof was this: Did I thInk had always done my best in my job?

Facing him was perhaps the hardest thing I had done in my life, and his answer turned me away from the church permanently, followed Hartley after by my “conversion” to atheism.

I have no idea what those kids, those young men, by now many of them old men - went through - but they deserve much better than the sniggering “the6 probably liked it” they’re getting here.

There was a comment a while back that sex with young people has always been viewed as a crime or a sign of mental illness, but that is just not true at all. If you look at the age of consent history of various states in the US, most set that at 10-12 up until the twentieth century. Then it was gradually moved up to higher and higher ages as women became more powerful politically, stopping at 16-18 in various states. Georgia and Hawaii actually had it set at 14 until 1995 and 2001, respectively.

Many people assume that the AOC is 18 and universal, just because any sexual photography or video of minors under 18 is considered child pornography by the feds, even if a 17 year old photographs themselves and keeps the photos private.

There is a recurrent claim that "children under XX can't consent because their brain is undeveloped", but the IQ equation (mental age / physical age) stops the physical age term at 15 because that's when the human brain is fully developed. There is proof of that, in that kid's IQs don't change if you measure it every year from age 10 to age 20. So there is some scientific justification for a universal AOC of 15. (Italy and Germany set it at 14.) And "near age exceptions" for minors in a relationship.

I think the real problem is not young people having sex. The real problem is predatory men and teens taking advantage of a power imbalance to compel unwanted sex with anybody of any age. I have some pretty intense personal experience with this because my father did some pretty nasty stuff to my sister, from age 7 to age 13. He was a charming, PhD-educated, sociopath, who had her convinced "he knew everything" and could do no wrong. At 10 years old (when I found out) I instantly realized she was brainwashed. She spilled the beans shortly after that when she asked her sex-ed teacher if you could get pregnant from anal sex. Our father was in custody within a day, and spent a while in the state prison for sex offenders. That was so long ago they considered diddling your own daughter as less offensive than diddling somebody else's, so he was not in prison for very long. These days he would have been in there for life..

My point here is that the abuse of power imbalance was far worse than the sex. She actually told me at the time that the sex was very enjoyable! So I guess he was very good at doing what he did without hurting her physically. But he really screwed her up mentally.

Now you've piqued my interest Mellow. What happened with the fraud?

Nothing, so far as I know. I made up an ability to “freeze the funds,” and doing so caused my supervisors to regretfully let me go (fortunately, into a non-grant position,) thereby saving my ass from an audit. I did manage to stop the attempted fraud, but what happened afterwards, I don’t know.

That’s an amazing and very personal and disturbing story PIA. That cannot have been easy sharing it with us.

This might be one of those that Greger told us about.