Friday, August 31, 2007

sex and religion: probably shouldn't mix them

Reading the news i came across an article about a fundamentalist Pastor who had sex with his daughters in order to "teach them how to behave with a husband". On so many levels i was grossed out by this situation.I ordered by thoughts thusly:

1) fathers have NO BUSINESS teaching their daughters about sex in such an intimate way.

2) how to behave with a husband should be something the husband and wife should be figuring out ALONE.

3) He used the Bible to justify his actions!

4) his wife and church decided to support him through the trial. My question was who was supporting the daughters? And what sort of support is the wife and church offering?

It is cases like these that i wonder how do some people get so confused with sex and religion and rights with wrongs...

5 comments:

Della said...

Was talking about something similar recently (child abuse by church people) and saying, yes, there needs to be forgiveness if the people who have done wrong are contrite. BUT... Punishment needs to happen, justice must be done.

And you think, how totally and utterly fucked up is it for his wife and church members to support him? For fuck's sake. Do excuse the swearing. Yes, that seems ironic in light of the forgiveness statement above, but there really cannot be any way in which child abuse can be justified, tolerated, condoned or allowed.

I feel terribly sorry for the daughters and how it must feel for their mother and church members to be supporting the man who hurt them so much :(

Do excuse the ranting.

kris said...

i agree that it is good for the man to get support. Depending on the type of support i'm okay with it coming from his wife and church. HOWEVER, the wife should be treading VERY VERY carefully because if she doesn't, she'll one day find that her children do not trust her, nor want their children left in her care for fear of what she may allow to happen to them.

The church too needs to be careful that they are supporting the man without trying to cover up or condone his actions in any way.

I must admit i was disappointed with the journalism of this article because it left a lot of questions unanswered.

Jenni G said...

"...because it left a lot of questions unanswered."

such as - why wasn't the wife prosecuted for aiding and abetting? (come on, she had to have known)

is this judge/justice system insane? this man has a good chance of rehabilitation after a DECADE of this shit? the sentence is less lengthy than the time of abuse? and parole in four years?!

if this man was "genuinely remorseful", then he had to know what he was doing was wrong. i believe there's a special place in hell for sickos like this.

it sounds, though, that he's just very mentally disturbed. in that case, god help him, but he still doesn't need to be out and about in four years endangering more children.

Della said...

I think if it's the sort of support where they're going to encourage him in rehabilitation and so on, then okay, that's a bit less of a worry. And the writer of the article should try to make that clear if that's the case. But if it's not, I dunno. I think if I was married and had kids and found out they'd been abused, whoever was doing it would be very lucky to escape with their genitals still intact, to be frank.

The church should really be making it clear that the Bible does not in any way at all encourage anything like that and in fact says that anyone who harms a child would be better off with a millstone around their neck and some mafia-style water action... It's so irritating how churches so often with either their inaction or desire to cover things up end up seeming to side with the perpetrator rather than the victims.

One just hopes he didn't encourage other church members to do similar things.

kris said...

Jenne: i think accounting may not have been your true calling. have you considered law?

Della: I too hope this wasn't part of his regular sunday sermon! Perhaps the rest of the church should be investigated just to be on the safe side.