Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the treatment afforded child porn collectors and how the issue impacts on the clergy abuse scandal in the Catholic Church:
“Earlier this month, a defrocked Catholic priest from Missouri was sentenced to nearly five years in prison on charges he possessed child pornography. Earlier this week, a former New York Law professor was sentenced to six months in jail for collecting 150,000 pictures of the most cruel and obscene portrayals of child pornography (the judge said she struggled over whether to send Professor Edward Samuels to jail). In the latter case, the professor was kept on the payroll by New York Law School for nearly a year after he was turned in by two technical staff members; the two who reported Samuels were instantly fired.
“Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if public libraries want to continue receiving federal funding, they must install filters on computer terminals that prevent children from accessing pornography. The American Library Association quickly denounced the decision for interfering with freedom of speech and so did the New York Times.
“Is anyone noticing what’s going on here? Our cultural elites are outraged over priests who collect child porn but not when the guilty is one of their own. Furthermore, secular elites defend unlimited access to pornography of the worst sort and get exercised only when told they must restrict access to kids.
“This is one more example where those who are shouting the loudest that the Catholic Church has gone soft on abusing priests are playing politics. They are nowhere to be seen calling for the head of guys like Samuels and they are everywhere to be seen calling for the head of those who would block kids from accessing porn. To say this is a twisted sense of morality is an understatement.”
