Saturday, March 02, 2013

Kelly Flood's glass house on clergy sexual abuse

When the Religious Freedom Act, House Bill 279, came to the floor of the Kentucky House Friday, State Rep. Kelly Flood (D-Lexington) insinuated that the bill had something to do with protecting pedophile priests. She railed on about the children who had been harmed by clergy sexual abuse, making special mention of the fact that she was an ordained Unitarian Univeralist minister, as if that somehow exempted her from her own indictment.

I mean, don't we all wish that the Catholic Church was more like the Unitarian Universalist Church in this regard? Don't we all know that the problem with clergy sexual abuse is unique to the Catholic Church and doesn't affect churches like, say, the Unitarian Universalist Church?

Uh oh. Wait a second ... As it turns out, it does! Who would of thunk it. Certainly not Kelly Flood.

Apparently Flood is unaware of the clergy sexual abuse controversy within her own church. Here is Rev. Lynn Strauss, a Unitarian Universalist minister, commenting on the problem:

We too have a history of clergy sexual abuse and misconduct. Our Association, for too long, also refused to see and respond to the truth of abuse of power by some of our ministers.
People in glass houses ... Oh, never mind.

And of course HB 279 has literally nothing to do with protecting clergy sexual abuse--in the Catholic Church or the Unitarian Universalist Church, or any of the multitude of other denominations that have had this same problem—a problem which is the consequence of having to rely for its supply of priests from the somewhat morally suspect pool of candidates known as homo sapiens.

Maybe Flood could submit legislation requiring churches to expand their pool of candidates for the ministry beyond its current limitations which restrict it to human beings.

All in the interests of diversity, you know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, her church does start prayers with to whom it may concern.

Lee said...

The first tenet of Unitarianism is that if your religion has any tenets, it's wrong.

Robin Edgar said...

"She railed on about the children who had been harmed by clergy sexual abuse, making special mention of the fact that she was an ordained Unitarian Univeralist minister, as if that somehow exempted her from her own indictment."

LOL! Believe it or not. . . the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston is falsely accusing me of the archaic crime of blasphemous libel for allegedly making "unfounded and vicious allegations to the effect that ministers of the Association engage in such despicable crimes as pedophilia and rape" in a misguided, hypocritical and stunningly hubristic attempt to intimidate me into memory holing some blog posts about UUs have have in fact been convicted of engaging in such despicable crimes as pedophilia and rape. Doh!

http://emersonavenger.blogspot.ca/2012/07/marc-andre-coulombe-stikeman-elliott.html