Shades of the Vatican

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Local Boy Scout leaders, police officials, prosecutors and mayors helped hush up numerous child sex abuse allegations against scoutmasters and other volunteers, according to details in a trove of nearly 15,000 pages of so-called "perversion files" compiled by the Scouts from 1959 to the mid-1980s. 

It's just like the Vatican.

At the news conference, Clark blasted the Boy Scouts for their continuing legal battles to try to keep the full trove of files secret.

"You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children," said Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s. 

The same words (bolded above) were spoken to the Vatican: how can you keep secrets when children are being harmed? It's a sensible question. So why do these men who run Christian institutions have such a terrible record of allowing children to be abused, and then hiding it? I think it has to do with men and sexuality. 

Many straight men can't deal with their own occasional gay thoughts so they go hog-wild when presented with any instance of gayness. But you'd think that since this isn't just gay behavior but sexual predation of children, they would speak up to protect the kids. Nope. 

Children were objects of prey within the Catholic church and the Boy Scouts. And the sad fact is that there isn't much self-examination going on in either organization -- because they're doing jeebus' work, which means they can't be wrong. They've created their own Catch-22 situation and they're sticking with it. It will be the end of both organizations.