This is a quick note to tell you all that I've fallen behind again with acknowledging comments here, and I apologize for having done so. I have no compelling reason to be behind — just scattered energy and focus as I work on a number of projects at the same time.
I've also been dealing with a number of trolls at various sites where I spend time, and doing so siphons my energy. Someone who reads my Facebook postings because he can see them as a friend of a friend, for instance, posted a nasty statement on my Facebook page yesterday insinuating that, because I had ridiculed the conspiracy theories floating around about the death of Justice Scalia, I must be part of that international homosexual rape club called the Catholic church.
Something to that effect.
It's almost funny to read such comments when I've just been revisiting the story of Father Jeyapaul and his alleged molestation of a number of young teenaged girls in Minnesota (he was convicted in one case), a story that hits home for Steve and me for some very personal reasons. The folks who want to push the meme that priests abusing male minors do so because they're gay not only ignore the many cases in which female minors are abused (the gut-wrenching story about Ohio Catholic seminarian Joel Wright, recently arrested in California for seeking minors to have sex with in Mexico, was about his attempt to pay money to have sex with female minors).
But these folks also never leap to the conclusion that Jeyapal, Joel Wright, Shawn Ratigan, who was sent to prison for taking nude photos of little girls, or many others like them molest female minors because they're heterosexual. They don't bring sexual orientation into the picture at all as they discuss such stories, because they recognize in these cases of adult male abuse of female minors — the kind of abuse of minors that is far and away most prevalent in our society — that it's simply beside the point.
Pedophilia and sexual orientation are distinctly different things.
It also strikes me as so bizarre for someone like the troll who left that ugly comment on my Facebook page to inform me that the men leading the Catholic church are running a big homosexual rape cult, when those very same men want to do precisely what this and other trolls like him are seeking to do: divert attention from their cover-up of abuse by scapegoating gay priests. People pushing the meme that gay priests are responsible for the abuse crisis are doing very well the work of the Catholic hierarchy. They're assisting the hierarchy in diverting attention from their cover-up of the abuse crisis by scapegoating gays and continuing the longstanding, hateful meme that gay men abuse children.
That comment on my Facebook page yesterday was one of several in recent days slamming me for discussing the death of Scalia at all. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, several folks have said to me on Facebook recently wagging a finger in my face for circulating articles discussing the legacy of Scalia forthrightly.
Wagging their white male heterosexual fingers in my face, I should add, since these comments have invariably come from straight white married men linked to me on Facebook — from men who have no reason, really, to want to talk about how Scalia's judicial judgments and political activism affected women, people of color, and LGBT folks . . . . Unless those men want to try to look at the world from the perspective of people like that, who were radically and deleteriously affected by Scalia's judicial judgments and political activism . . . .
Point of this long statement: it takes time and energy to engage people like this, and this is another reason my energy for replying to your welcome comments here has been siphoned off in the past few days. Please know that I do value your comments.
The graphic: a note, to illustrate my note to you. This is a note written by my 3-great-grandfather Dennis Lindsey granting permission for his eldest daughter Sarah Brooks Lindsey to obtain "lison" to marry James Beckham Speake on 4 January 1833 in Lawrence County, Alabama. The original is in the couple's marriage file in the county archives.
