Bill Donohue believes that Irish are alcoholics.Oh wait, he believes that there is a correlation between being Irish and being an alcoholic.
This is actually rather baffling since there does not appear to be much evidence that there is a disproportionate number of Irish who are alcoholics.
There is a correlation between being poor and being alcoholic, which is where the stereotype of the alcoholic Irishman comes from as many Irish up until fairly recently lived in poverty.
Fairly recently, of course, in Historical terms. As in, sometime in the last sixty years.
In fact, Ireland’s alcohol consumption- which is not the same as alcoholism- lags behind several other nations, and is only just a little bit further ahead than the United States. Ireland’s alcohol consumption is 13.7% and the US’s is 8.6%; however, this does not mean that there are more alcoholics in Ireland than in the US because consumption is different from alcoholism.
According to Donohue: “Think of it this way. We know there is a correlation between being Irish and being an alcoholic, but that doesn’t mean all Irishmen are, or will become, alcoholics. But it does mean they have a special problem in this area. Does this now make me anti-Irish?”
In actuality, it makes him a believer in stereotypes since the image of the drunken Irish sot dates back to the era when many Irish were coming into the United States and people were busy trying to degrade and denigrate the Irish. It is as stereotypical as the lazy Mexican, the money grubbing Jew, the stupid African-American, and the snooty Frenchman. It is a stereotype just like the pedophile gay man even though the current statistics are not backing up Donohue’s beliefs.
Donohue goes on to claim “Alfred Kinsey was the first to identify the correlation between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors. In 1948, he found that 37 percent of all male homosexuals admitted to having sex with children under 17 years of age.”
Yes, and you could probably have found quite a higher number of straight men who had sexual relationships with children under the age of 17 back then too.
The age of consent in much of the United States prior to 1920 was ten, and after 1920, was sixteen. In some states, it was still possible to get married to a girl as young as twelve with the consent of her parents as late as this decade.
Donohue’s analogies are rather off given that information. In fact, they are based on stereotypes.
Donohue, who is the had of the Catholic League, also seems to not grasp that many of the priests who abuse young boys do so because of availability and not because of sexual preference.
These priests are not that dissimilar to the population of a prison where sexual outlet is with what is physically available, and in the case of the majority of priests, that is men.
Another problem with Donohue’s ‘evidence’ is that the majority of the children available to priests is post-pubescent boys, and not pre-pubescent.
Donohue is trying to do everything he can in order to try and put the blame on gay men for what is going on in the Catholic Church.
Unfortunately, the problem for him is that a large number of girls are molested every year, and that number has been growing every year since the early 1980’s when girls were allowed closer contact with priests.
Many of those girls are only just now coming forward to tell of their abuse. Many girls are reluctant to come forward, and there are reports of many of the girls who were molested by the priests who just shut up or who were silenced.
Catholicism is especially harsh when it comes to girls and women, and the idea of a woman especially in many traditional Catholic areas coming forward to tell of being abused by a priests has been hard to break.
Donohue’s evidence may show that there is a tendency for abusive priests to target boys, but the problem for him is that evidence is easily explained by the culture within the Catholic Church.
About the only thing that Donohue does say that is correct is that the majority of the cases in the Catholic Church are not, technically, pedophilia.
Rather they are pederasty or ebophilia.
That is, the targeting of children after puberty, but that is about the only thing that he says which is not based on stereotypes or baseless “research.”
SIC: LezGet