Thanks for your stated opinion of me Ed, and I am as you imagine, a reasonable person.
(Smokey...I think you and I understand one another fairly well without any need for words)

I'm afraid, where you are wrong, is in your supposition that I have any fear, loathing, or hatred of homosexuals.
Right from the start, my stance has been against the promotion of MALE homosexuality as a safe healthy and normal lifestyle. my stance has not really been against homosexuals at all, but against the promotion by supposedly liberal govts of behavioural minorities, regardless of the consequences of their behaviour.

Ihere have been several threads, in which the health issues associated with male homosexuality have been discussed. Before participating in these threads I had no idea that the health statistics were so bad......this information had never been made widely available to the public, but for the last thirty years homosexuality has been portrayed positively in almost all of the media.

It is absolutely certain that if the homosexual health, life expectancy, and HIV figures had been available forty years ago,homosexuality would never have been de-criminalised.....on health grounds.

Regarding clerical sexual abuse......isn't the most important thing to get the abuse stopped? As most of the abuse is between post pubescent boys/youths and adult males, then would it not be sensible to look see if there is a link between the very high numbers of homosexuals in the priesthood and the high numers of homosexual assaults taking place.....isn't that common sense for fuck sake! not "bigotry"
It is completely wrong to bring the reasoning against paedophilia into this case....the vast majority of these assualts are not paedophilia. There is another word, which properly describes sexual abuse of teenage boys and youths, but that word escapes me at the moment and I have no time to look it up.

Joe talked of a "gay culture" in the priesthood, which made him "uncomfortable", perhaps this culture is what allowed the abuse to become endemic?

Whatever, as Mary says, this behaviour needs to be irradicated,and all abuse cases should be prosecuted.
Would our resident religiphobes agree that all priests found guilty of sexual abuse of minors, be forced as part of their punishment, to take a sexual orientation test?

Only then would we start to get somewhere near the truth, and be in a possition to protect the children of the future.