Banishment of sexual predators
May 6, 2005
Fred Hutchison
RenewAmerica analyst
Miami Beach is built upon a sand bar and is a very long and very narrow island. A distance of 2,500 feet from any point on Miami Beach will place one in the water. Mayor Dermer’s proposed statute represents a de facto banishment of sexual predators from Miami Beach, or perhaps an invitation that they live on houseboats.
In his eagerness to get the sexual predators off his turf, Dermer might unwittingly be inviting the sexual predators who now live in Miami Beach to move to the City of Miami or to South Florida and prey upon the children there.
Banishment, a problematical punishment
Banishment is a tricky punishment with unpredictable and often peculiar outcomes. Banishment is a get-out-of-jail-free card for the antisocial drifter, but can be a catastrophic blow for a highly socialized person of elite connections and elegant culture. Examples of banishment in history provide insights to the mind-set of the rulers who used it and the reactions of those who suffered it.
Banishment was a favorite legal punishment in Ancient Greece, the Republics of Renaissance Italy, and Renaissance England. It was considered a harsh punishment for a serious offender. In the case of Classical Athens and Renaissance Florence, banishment meant ripping an individual away from the community that was considered essential to the life of a civilized man, and separating a soul from the communal ground that gave meaning to life. Athenians and Florentines were social creatures tightly attached to their native city in a way that is difficult to imagine for an individualistic, tumbleweed American who moves every five years and forgets to leave a forwarding address. Socrates drank hemlock, rather than being cast into the outer darkness of banishment from golden Athens.
In Mallory’s Morte d’ Arthur, King Arthur banished Sir Lancelot from Camelot as punishment for his affair with the queen. Lancelot viewed ejection from the glory of Camelot as a purgatorial wandering in a dark wilderness. Mallory, a Renaissance Englishman, based his classic tale of Camelot and the knights of the round table on Medieval French Arthurian Romances by Cretien de Troyes. Banishment had greater horrors for a nationalistic patriotic Englishman of the Renaissance, like Mallory, than it had for a medieval Frenchman like Troyes, who lived prior to the rise of strong sentiments of national patriotism.
Mallory wrote his classic from prison, which is like banishment in the feeling of being cut off from one’s community. Since the Renaissance, Englishmen who explored and colonized the world lived in horror of the idea of a perpetual exile from the British islands. Just the thought that return to England was possible kept them content for years in the colonies.
A large minority of the American colonists sided with King George III because they could not bear the idea of being permanently cut off from England. Some of those who had no plans to visit England felt this way. It was the possibility of returning to England as an Englishman that mattered.
An exile was no longer an Englishman, but was a vagabond, the flotsam and jetsam castaway on the rude shores of a hostile world. England exiled some of its most refractory criminals to the aboriginal wilderness of Australia. "After all, who cares what the English criminals do to each other in that remote desert or what they do to the aborigines?"
In the case of Athens, Florence, and England, banishment of a malefactor involved indifference to the mischief this might cause to the people outside of the golden circle of civilization and culture. "Let us inflict that meddlesome Socrates upon the barbarians." Banishment is the dumping of a society’s refuse upon despised foreigners. Thus, banishment involves contempt for the world outside the privileged community of culture and civilization. It is the cruel remedy of a proud aristocratic culture.
Does Mayor Dermer have an aristocratic contempt for the world outside Miami Beach? Miami Beach has lost some of its most affluent residents to Palm Beach further up the Florida coast. However, Miami Beach is still a privileged enclave compared with the squalid sectors of urban Miami and South Florida. It would be unfair to assume that Mayor Dermer delights in the thought of inflicting the sexual predators of Miami Beach upon the children of South Florida. He probably has zeal to protect the children of Miami Beach and a lazy indifference to the fate of the children in South Florida. His indifference might involve as much of the lazy plebeian attitude of "I don’t want to think about it" as the haughty patrician attitude of "I don’t care about the rabble." The prideful insularity and contempt of an elite clique mingles easily with the mentally and morally lazy desire for a sticky problem to go away.
Hear no evil
To my amazement, not one person, whether they were for or against DOMA, said one word about the potential effects and dangers to children living in gay households, yet this was surely the most important issue at stake. I pointed this out to the committee, and the hostile reaction from the Republican committee chairman who was in favor of DOMA led me to conclude that I had just broken a taboo. I noticed an icy silence in the room as if some people were thinking, "How dare this rude fool broach the painful subject that we don’t like to think about or talk about."
Both the pro-DOMA Republicans and the anti-DOMA Democrats were clearly uncomfortable that someone had the temerity or ignorance to violate a social taboo and publicly discuss the uncertain fate of children in gay homes. My popularity with that committee might be compared to the reception I might receive from the Miami Beach City Council if I described the raping of Miami and South Florida children by banished Miami Beach sexual predators.
I pointed out to the committee that although gay adoption is legal in Ohio, the state social services and academic social sciences have been mysteriously silent about the outcomes. I asked the committee, "Could this be a conspiracy of silence about the hard facts about what is happening to the children in gay households?" I followed with the rejoinder, "We are discussing gay marriage, a radical social experiment, without knowing what we are doing because the facts have been withheld."
I sensed that my words were landing like blows upon a startled and morally timid group of people. I began to recite statistics from the Family Research Council about the rates of pedophilia among gays. The chairman interrupted and rebuked me in an whiny quavery voice, and told me to go on to another subject. Not only were the facts withheld, but the committee chairman was determined that the facts continue to be withheld. I had hit the sore point of human conscience and had said just enough before being silenced to disturb those who wanted to hear no evil.
The thing people fight to keep covered up is often the very thing that is most essential to know in a debate or an investigation. If there is a link between homosexuality and pedophilia, it is something we must know before allowing gay adoptions.
However, the elites who compile our codes of politically-correct speech have decreed that a possible link between homosexuality and pedophilia is never to be uttered in public or in polite company. As soon as I realized that the political elites had decreed that this subject must be stifled, my first impulse was that it should be shouted from the housetops. "What I tell you in darkness, that speak in the light; and what ye hear in the ear, that proclaim from the housetops" (Matthew 10:27).
The chairman of the Senate committee really lost patience with me when I pointed out the exhibitionism of gays when they march nude on "gay pride" day. (Would not marching nude down city streets be more of a "gay shame" day?)
In my city, the press and the political leaders have a conspiracy of silence so that not a word is uttered about the exhibitionism. The gay community is trying to shout about their perverse sexuality from the housetops, but the political establishment and the press is covering up the exhibitionism.
However, the kids who watch the parade talk about it in school and perhaps dare their friends to walk nude down the street. I asked the committee whether the exhibitionistic gays display themselves before their adopted children at home or whether the nudity is just a publicity stunt. After all, some gays display themselves before the children of the city as they march down the street. For some reason, this question enraged the ostensibly conservative Republican committee chairman.
The conspiracy of silence by the elite of our society concerning gay perversions and predations makes it possible for the ACLU to constantly harass the Boy Scouts with lawsuits for not allowing gay scoutmasters. The sensible Scout executives do not want their boys to be raped when they go camping. The Big Bothers, Big Sisters organization, which has done much good, is now in disgrace, because of reported rapes of boys by big brothers. The organization allowed gays and lesbians to be mentors to kids, and political correctness prevented an honest discussion of the possible consequences.
In the name of fairness, it is vital to make clear that a discussion of the possible tendency of gay males towards pedophilia does not imply that all gays have this tendency. Most gays probably do not. It is also important to make clear that not all pedophiles are gay. Some pedophiles are heterosexual or bisexual. However, if there is a disproportionate tendency for gays to be attracted to pedophilia, there must be a public discussion of this possibility before allowing gays to adopt children.
Clerical coverup
Surprisingly, the American Conference of Catholic Bishops has played down the connection between gay priests and pedophilia. The predators have been adult male priests, and most of their victims adolescent boys. If the predators were heterosexual, they would have gone after the girls and not the boys. The male priests who prey upon adolescent boys are gay.
Sexual predation on male adolescents by male priests is a gay crime. Why must we shut our eyes to this obvious fact? Why didn’t the Bishops encourage us to consider this question?
Thankfully, the newly crowned Pope Benedict XVI is interested in the question of whether gays should be allowed to be priests. Why was not the late Pope John Paul II interested in this question? Why did he appoint Bishop Law to a prominent office in the Curia, after Law sheltered pedophile priests in Boston? These are deep waters.
If the bishops had common sense and truly cared about the children, they would not allow gay priests to be active in children’s ministry. Political correctness and forbidden speech codes have driven out their common sense and deadened their moral instincts. But how did such codes that give cover to evil wiggle their way into the church like parasitical worms entering a host body?
Like Mayor Dermer, Law used a mild banishment policy to make the issue go away for a while, so that he did not have to think about it. For Law, anything was better than to morally confront the wicked priest, and defrock him for vile crimes against children and turn him over to the police. That would be painful, embarrassing, and stressful for a Bishop who doesn’t like confrontations and is worried about his image and his status.
As for the pain, embarrassment, stress, and trauma of molested children in the parishes where Law assigned priests with a track record of pedophilia, Law assumed that he would never have to hear about it, or at least not for a long while. Wash your hands once more, Pontius Pilate.
If ever there was a prestigious ingrown elite, it is the Catholic clergy. Classical Athens, Renaissance Florence, and England in the days of empire also had prestigious ingrown elites. That which is troublesome to the elite is banished and quickly forgotten. The havoc that the banished troublemakers might wreak in another locale is put out of mind and is not discussed in polite company. Thus, the all-important tranquility of the smug elite is preserved. Cardinal Law does not look sinister. He looks fat, smug, and complacent.
Deliver us from evil
Let us assume that ordinary sin and cosmic evil can be differentiated. Everyone has been tempted to violate the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins. The ordinary person has violated some of these in his actions and others in his thoughts or words.
For example, many of those who have not committed the act of adultery have either committed adultery in their imagination or thought about the possibility with a little too much pleasure and secret approval. Hollywood understands this principle of human nature and panders to it. This can be called an ordinary sin, not to downgrade its seriousness, but to understand its universality.
By contrast, the temptation or desire to commit a cosmic sin is rare. For example, few people are tempted to poison a community’s drinking water, join a totalitarian regime that practices genocide, become a terrorist, set fire to an orphanage, or rape a child. To the average person, such things are unthinkable. They are cosmic evils that involve a league between a bitter antisocial narcissist and demonic powers.
Pedophilia is a cosmic evil. It destroys a child for the indulgence of perverted lusts and delight in domination. Many people who clearly understand the Seven Deadly Sins and sins that violate the Ten Commandments, have no concept of cosmic evil. The complacent and the timid might even refuse to think about it. The skeptic might rationalize it and talk about root causes of poverty.
The sheep that fails to do this might wander from the herd and be eaten. Let us earnestly pray to be delivered from cosmic evil.
Lord, deliver us from evil, and protect our children from the sexual predators banished from Miami Beach. Amen.
RenewAmerica analyst Fred Hutchison also writes a column for RenewAmerica.
© 2005 Fred Hutchison
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