A self-confessed pedophile is released on bail to await his trial. WHAT????!!!!

A 27-year-old military serviceman from Toulon in France who stands accused of repeatedly raping his niece over a period of three years has been released on bail.

The accused man has already admitted that he raped his niece on five occasions, the first of which was on July 1, 2009. The girl was 11 years old at that time. He is also known to have accessed pedopornographic images on the Internet over a period of several months.

The judge justified his decision to free the man to await trial instead of holding him in custody pending trial by saying that he had "furnished details about all the acts of which he is accused", that nothing "would lead one to consider that he lied during his spoken statements to the police", and that there is nothing to indicate "that there may be other victims". The judge concluded that the accused "presented solid guarantees that he would not skip bail." 

It goes without saying that this judgement has outraged many people. The police are furious that long months of hard work designed to put a suspected repeat-offender pedophile behind bars has failed even before his trial, the public - and parents of young children in particular - is dumbfounded, and it's the same story for all those associations and other organisations that fight child abuse and pedophilia. 

And I am outraged too. I am absolutely incensed that in this, a supposedly modern and progressist society which says it respects human - and that includes children's - rights, a judge can free a man who has admitted that he raped a child five times. I am sickened by the judge's mealy-mouthed, totally biased and subjective reasoning, and - although I would never dream of voting for them myself - I fully understand why the French political party which is making the most positive progress in polls at the moment is the.......

.......extreme-right National Front. 

‘Homophobia : the consequence of latent homosexuality?’

'The Father, the Son and the Holy Ggost'

That headline is in single quotes because it's the headline of an article on Nouvelobs today by French social psychology professor Laurent Bègue.

The article is written against a background of increasing pressure from the Catholic church (more on that here) and other opponents of the government’s plans to legalise gay marriage, and just a few days before nationwide anti-gay marriage demonstrations. 

There is nothing new in the idea expressed in the headline of course, as the theory has existed in academic and research terms since the Eighties (see Wikipedia for more details). Nor is there anything new in the article itself, apart from some research information I didn't know about, but still, it got me thinking. I had a nagging feeling that I knew something which would help me decide for myself whether or not the theory is true. Then it came to me. Of course!

You don't have to be a psychologist or any other kind of ologist to see just how true that theory is when you think about it. Here we have a church, Catholic as it happens, which is virulently homophobic. To each his own. And we know that there are many more homosexuals in the Catholic church than there are in civil society, and that picture is compounded even more by the fact that the church doesn't even support heterosexual relationships within its organisation, never mind homosexuals. Yet here they are at the forefront of the fight to stop gay marriage and offer no specific rights to homosexuals in terms of union. Well well well....

But wait a minute, I thought, this line of thought has much more serious implications than that of homosexuality, which is after all accepted by most reasonable people who support the right of people to live their lives how they wish as long as they do no harm to others.

The deeper and more serious implication of the issue is that it is also well-known that the Catholic church has an inordinately high percentage of pedophiles within its ranks than is the case for the rest of society. And that many thousands of them have been exposed over the last few years. And that the church refuses even today to introduce satisfactory measures which would allow them to identify pedophile clergy and turn them over to the police.

Why did I bring up pedophilia? Am I creating an artificial and pernicious link between homosexuality and pedophelia? No, I am not, BUT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS. Someone from the Catholic church makes that link almost every day in their criticisms of gay marriage. Several prominent clergymen and many lesser-known clergy have strongly and publicly insinuated during their campaign that homosexuality may lead to pedophilia. That is very revealing indeed.

No sane person would link homosexuality to pedophilia, and there is no evidence - research indicates the opposite in fact - to show that an abnormally high number of those pedophile priests who have been tried and convicted are also homosexual.

No, there is no link, but, as is the case for homosexuality, the fact that the Catholic church makes such outrageous conflating statements on pedophilia shows just how guilty some of its members must feel about it.

Ugh. What a detestable organisation the Catholic church is.

Charlie Hebdo cartoon enrages French Catholics and so much the better

Happy Family snapshot

Oh dear, the Catholic Church and its followers are NOT happy bunnies today, and it's all the fault of that nasty horrid little Charlie Hebdo who has been picking on them again.

The impudent French satirical mag has been a bad boy yet again by placing a truculent cartoon on the front page of its latest issue. It depicts 'The Father' with 'The Son' euhhh, 'behind' it, and "The Holy Ghost" sticking out of bringing up the rear. The caption reads "Cardinal Vingt-Trois has Three Fathers." It has been condemned by church leaders and followers alike and France's Catholic Twitterati has been working overtime with anger.

But why has Charlie Hebdo published the cartoon? Because leading French Catholics such as bishops and cardinals have been waging a viciously homophobic campaign against the government's plans to legalise same-sex marriage, that's why.

Cardinal Vingt-Trois ('vingt-trois means 23 in English) has been at the helm of the campaign, which has seen various church leaders assimilate homosexuality and same-sex marriage to incest, pedophilia, polygamy and other crimes. Not only are they infamous and deliberately inflammatory comparisons to make, they are dangerously wrong.

Cardinal 23 has said that same-sex marriage would represent "the marriage of a few imposed upon all." He is wrong. Nobody is imposing anything on anyone, the idea is to give people the freedom to live how they wish.

Cardinal 23 says that the church respects "the sexual reality of human existence." He, and the church, are wrong. The reality of human sexuality is that homosexuality has always existed and is thus a part of human reality.

Cardinal 23 says that "to impose within marriage and the family a vision of man without recognising sexual difference would be a deceptive sham which would shake the foundations of our society and impose discrimination between children." He is wrong. Again, society does recognise the existence of sexual difference and that's precisely why same-sex marriage is being envisaged. But - and ironically - he is right about children because given his views he evidently has no difficulty in discriminating between children and adults who are not what he thinks they should be. For him and others of his ilk some are good/saved and others are bad/lost.

Cardinal 23 bemoans the absence of a national debate on the matter. Wrong again. This issue has been debated by governments, the press and the people for at least 40 years and the result is that the majority of French citizens now support same-sex marriage, which has been a long-standing demand articulated by large sections of the public.

Cardinal 23 is not only anti-homosexual and same-sex marriage, he is anti-abortion, artificial insemination, stem cell research and more and calls them pagan, sectarian and atheist practices.

His list of accusations and condemnation is long and many other church leaders support him.

There is nothing wrong with the Cardinal expressing his point of view of course, that's his right. On the other hand he and his henchmen have sparked off an ugly public debate and the Catholic Church is de facto trying to influence a secular government. There's nothing wrong with that either. After all, all is fair in love and war.

What is wrong however is to expect the rest of society to refrain from riposting. The church has deliberately picked a fight with society and it is beginning to realise that society is fighting back, hence Charlie Hebdo's cartoon. There's nothing blasphemous about it, at least not in a free country. It insults religion? So what? He and his crew have spent centuries insulting the preferences of real human beings, not just a belief.

Besides, given the well-documented history of widespread pedophelia within the Catholic Church it should not be throwing stones from it's glass house and it has no lessons to give anyone.

The fact is that the Catholic Church is getting a well-deserved dose of its own medecine. Besides, Charlie Hebdo's cartoon is a very mild, almost placebo, criticism of the church compared to the church's own putrid and degenerate slander and slurs which, may I repeat, assimilate homosexuality and same-sex marriage to incest, pedophilia and polygamy.


The Catholic Church should be grateful that Charlie Hebdo has not printed a cartoon of a priest being fellated by a choirboy. That has happened before, and the church may now consider itself warned that if its despicable stigmatisation of people's sexual preferences continues it may well find itself being reminded yet again of its age-old rank hypocrisy and double standards in the matter.