Showing posts with label child abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child abuse. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Child "Exorcism" in the Congo...
This sounds trite, but I'm actually too infuriated at this point to discuss this topic at length - The Clever Badger has a post on his blog about violent child exorcisms going on in the Congo. Check it out, but be warned that the video really is hard to watch. The witch-doctoring charlatanry on display in the video CB has highlighted is nothing but pure child abuse for profit and has no place in the modern world.
The More Things Change...
The California Supreme Court recently upheld the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage. It's a perfect example of the difference between law and justice - the court is correct that the change to the state's constitution to ban gay marriage was done properly and was completely within California's legal framework, but that doesn't make it morally correct. Whereas no law was broken at all in the passing of Proposition 8, it still represents an act of discrimination against homosexuals and is thus morally odious.
I've talked about gay marriage on here before and thus I'm not going to copy and paste my same old talking points. However, in (dis)honor of today's decision I've dredged up a crazy anti-homosexual propaganda film from back in the day. Ironically, considering that today's blow to gay marriage came from California, this film was created in cooperation with the Inglewood, CA police department. The film embedded below are entitled Boys Beware and the basic message is "homosexuals = child-raping murderers".* Not exactly nuanced.
Looking around on the web, you're likely to find numerous pages by such groups as the Traditional Values Coalition that echo the long-since debunked claims of Boys Beware by intentionally attempting to mask the distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia/child sexual abuse. Sexual assaults, according to the Arizona Crime Victims Services website is not about sexuality per se. Rather, "[t]he major motive for sexual assault is power - to overpower and control another person."+ That is to say that men who sexually abuse boys often do so not because they're especially attracted to them, but rather as an act of anger and a display of power. Heterosexual men who would never seek a sexual encounter with another grown man nevertheless sometimes sexually abuse young boys because of this - The sex act is more about hurting and humiliating the victim (and making the offender fell like a big tough guy) than actual sexual gratification.
Furthermore, since most sexual abuse of children is at the hands of a family member or a trusted acquaintance (source), with strangers accounting for something in the 10% of child sex abuse perpetrators. Finally, having been the victim of sexual abuse oneself is a far greater predictor of becoming an abuser than one's sexual orientation. Therefore, the likelihood of a child being abused ex nihilo by a homosexual stranger is essentially nil.
But I prattle on. For a more thorough treatment of the subject, I refer readers to the the website of Dr. Gregory Herek and what amounts to a point-by-point refutation of the claims on display in the film and on the TVC wesbite.
* This film also has a sister film entitled Girls Beware that doesn't have the same anti-homosexual component.
+ This echoes the findings of John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Ann Burgess, as discussed in their landmark Crime Classification Manual.
I've talked about gay marriage on here before and thus I'm not going to copy and paste my same old talking points. However, in (dis)honor of today's decision I've dredged up a crazy anti-homosexual propaganda film from back in the day. Ironically, considering that today's blow to gay marriage came from California, this film was created in cooperation with the Inglewood, CA police department. The film embedded below are entitled Boys Beware and the basic message is "homosexuals = child-raping murderers".* Not exactly nuanced.
Looking around on the web, you're likely to find numerous pages by such groups as the Traditional Values Coalition that echo the long-since debunked claims of Boys Beware by intentionally attempting to mask the distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia/child sexual abuse. Sexual assaults, according to the Arizona Crime Victims Services website is not about sexuality per se. Rather, "[t]he major motive for sexual assault is power - to overpower and control another person."+ That is to say that men who sexually abuse boys often do so not because they're especially attracted to them, but rather as an act of anger and a display of power. Heterosexual men who would never seek a sexual encounter with another grown man nevertheless sometimes sexually abuse young boys because of this - The sex act is more about hurting and humiliating the victim (and making the offender fell like a big tough guy) than actual sexual gratification.
Furthermore, since most sexual abuse of children is at the hands of a family member or a trusted acquaintance (source), with strangers accounting for something in the 10% of child sex abuse perpetrators. Finally, having been the victim of sexual abuse oneself is a far greater predictor of becoming an abuser than one's sexual orientation. Therefore, the likelihood of a child being abused ex nihilo by a homosexual stranger is essentially nil.
But I prattle on. For a more thorough treatment of the subject, I refer readers to the the website of Dr. Gregory Herek and what amounts to a point-by-point refutation of the claims on display in the film and on the TVC wesbite.
* This film also has a sister film entitled Girls Beware that doesn't have the same anti-homosexual component.
+ This echoes the findings of John Douglas, Robert Ressler, and Ann Burgess, as discussed in their landmark Crime Classification Manual.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Faith Healing Kills Another Child...
A 16 year-old Oregon boy named Neil Beagley is dead from complications of a treatable urinary tract blockage because he refused to seek medical treatment for the disease. Beagley, a member of Oregon's Followers of Christ church, instead opted to rely on faith-healing to fix the problem. It did not, leaving him to an excruciating death due to organ failures. A simple catheter would have saved his life.
Beagley's parents don't face charges in this particular case because Oregon laws allow children 14 and older to refuse medical treatment for themselves. Now, I believe in the right of adults to refuse medical treatment or even elect to be euthanized if their afflictions are untreatable, but let's think this through a little bit. A 14 year-old kid can't drink, smoke, drive, vote, drop out of school, or legally have sex - If they can't be trusted in these matters, why should they be trusted in matters of their own life and death? The Supreme Court has found that minors do not have the full set of rights as an adult - For example, in the 2007 Morse vs. Frederick case, the Court found that minors do not necessarily enjoy full freedom of speech rights in certain situations. Thus, one may rationally conclude that if minors do not necessarily have a full compliment of rights, it is logical to withhold above all the right to refuse medical treatment. While there is apparently no legitimate way to prosecute Beagley's parents because of Oregon laws, this case should be sufficient cause for the Oregonian legislature to reconsider whether or not children can be trusted to act in their own rational self interest with regards to matters of their own mortality.
Oregon has done quite a bit over the past few years to destroy legal shields by which parents who kill their kids by refusing them treatment for religious or other reason can avoid prosecution. Interestingly, the case Beagley's own cousin, 15-month old Ava Worthington, who died in March from from untreated pneumonia was the first case to be prosecuted under this new set of laws. Worthington's parents intend to use a religious freedom defense in the case, but Oregon laws will make that a tough sell.
For those of you keeping score, the government generally contends that it has a pertinent interest in stopping parents from condemning their children to agonizingly painful deaths due to willful negligence. Religious convictions are not a trump card to parental responsibilities (and homicide laws), no matter how you try and dress them up. To my way of thinking, refusing a child medical treatment in favor of prayer is child abuse on the scale of intentionally starving a child to death.
Beagley's parents don't face charges in this particular case because Oregon laws allow children 14 and older to refuse medical treatment for themselves. Now, I believe in the right of adults to refuse medical treatment or even elect to be euthanized if their afflictions are untreatable, but let's think this through a little bit. A 14 year-old kid can't drink, smoke, drive, vote, drop out of school, or legally have sex - If they can't be trusted in these matters, why should they be trusted in matters of their own life and death? The Supreme Court has found that minors do not have the full set of rights as an adult - For example, in the 2007 Morse vs. Frederick case, the Court found that minors do not necessarily enjoy full freedom of speech rights in certain situations. Thus, one may rationally conclude that if minors do not necessarily have a full compliment of rights, it is logical to withhold above all the right to refuse medical treatment. While there is apparently no legitimate way to prosecute Beagley's parents because of Oregon laws, this case should be sufficient cause for the Oregonian legislature to reconsider whether or not children can be trusted to act in their own rational self interest with regards to matters of their own mortality.
Oregon has done quite a bit over the past few years to destroy legal shields by which parents who kill their kids by refusing them treatment for religious or other reason can avoid prosecution. Interestingly, the case Beagley's own cousin, 15-month old Ava Worthington, who died in March from from untreated pneumonia was the first case to be prosecuted under this new set of laws. Worthington's parents intend to use a religious freedom defense in the case, but Oregon laws will make that a tough sell.
For those of you keeping score, the government generally contends that it has a pertinent interest in stopping parents from condemning their children to agonizingly painful deaths due to willful negligence. Religious convictions are not a trump card to parental responsibilities (and homicide laws), no matter how you try and dress them up. To my way of thinking, refusing a child medical treatment in favor of prayer is child abuse on the scale of intentionally starving a child to death.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Where's the Harm? Right Here.
An 11 year-old Wisconsin girl has died an excruciating death from untreated type I diabetes because her religious parents opted for prayer over medical treatment. Madeline Neumann's parents, Dale and Leilani, are some species of non-denominational Christian whackjobs who, not unlike Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Scientists, believe that medical intervention is not necessary and that prayer is the best medicine. They allowed their daughter to slip into a diabetic coma and die before "other relatives" called 911. This is glossed over in the AP report, but there's a video report on CNN's site from (the often insufferable) Nancy Grace that indicates that these relatives were from California and had been alerted to the trouble when the parents called them asking for additional prayers.
The mother is quoted in an Associated Press story as saying
"Our lives are in God's hands and whatever we go through we are just going to trust him."
In other words, to paraphrase Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, "if she dies, she dies."
There's some controversy as to how long the medical crisis had been going on. The AP story indicates that everything happened within the span of a few days, though Nancy Grace indicated that the situation had been going on for close to a month but that the girl had only recently become acutely symptomatic. Madeline, who had been withdrawn from public school in favor of homeschooling, had apparently not seen a doctor in 8 years.
As usual, officials are confusing the willful neglect of a child's well-being with a religious freedom issue, and thus have declined to remove the family's three other children from the home. Now keep in mind that I have no problem with the issue of adults declining medical care because of their religious beliefs - it's asinine, but it's also their choice. Children, however, are a whole different matter. As Richard Dawkins said, there's no such thing as a Catholic child, a Protestant child, or a Muslim children, just the children of Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims. Once that child reaches 18 they can do whatever they want, but until then their parents are responsible for them, and the entire purpose of the CPS system is to make sure that parents are executing that responsibility properly, rather than letting their child languish in a coma and die when they could be treated with simple insulin shots.
Another thing that grinds my gears is that the press (note especially the Nancy Grace segment) is attempting to paint these folks as regular whackjobs rather than whackjob Christians. The Nancy Grace segment even went so far as to display a quote from the mother about how the family doesn't consider itself religious, even as the AP story AND the Nancy Grace segment both contained quotes about how the family believes in the Bible and the laying on of hands. They may not belong to an organized church (despite the similarities to the Christian Science nutjobs), but they are clearly basing their delusions on Christian mythology. I guess it's just another case of "hands off" with religion, even when an innocent girl is dead.
Hopefully these psychos will get what's coming to them, but somehow I doubt it.
For an interesting discussion about religious freedom and the denial of medical treatment, I recommend the well-researched and even-handed "God vs. the Gavel - Religion and the Rule of Law" by Marci A. Hamilton.
Edit- An astute friend of mine found a link to a "testimonial" from Leilani Neumann on the cheerily named website AmericasLastDays.com where she details how God sends her visions and gave her magic X-Men powers in order to help her "save" her Catholic friend. Yeah, these folks weren't at all religious... The testimonial is here, if you dare to read it.
The mother is quoted in an Associated Press story as saying
"Our lives are in God's hands and whatever we go through we are just going to trust him."
In other words, to paraphrase Ivan Drago from Rocky IV, "if she dies, she dies."
There's some controversy as to how long the medical crisis had been going on. The AP story indicates that everything happened within the span of a few days, though Nancy Grace indicated that the situation had been going on for close to a month but that the girl had only recently become acutely symptomatic. Madeline, who had been withdrawn from public school in favor of homeschooling, had apparently not seen a doctor in 8 years.
As usual, officials are confusing the willful neglect of a child's well-being with a religious freedom issue, and thus have declined to remove the family's three other children from the home. Now keep in mind that I have no problem with the issue of adults declining medical care because of their religious beliefs - it's asinine, but it's also their choice. Children, however, are a whole different matter. As Richard Dawkins said, there's no such thing as a Catholic child, a Protestant child, or a Muslim children, just the children of Catholics, Protestants, and Muslims. Once that child reaches 18 they can do whatever they want, but until then their parents are responsible for them, and the entire purpose of the CPS system is to make sure that parents are executing that responsibility properly, rather than letting their child languish in a coma and die when they could be treated with simple insulin shots.
Another thing that grinds my gears is that the press (note especially the Nancy Grace segment) is attempting to paint these folks as regular whackjobs rather than whackjob Christians. The Nancy Grace segment even went so far as to display a quote from the mother about how the family doesn't consider itself religious, even as the AP story AND the Nancy Grace segment both contained quotes about how the family believes in the Bible and the laying on of hands. They may not belong to an organized church (despite the similarities to the Christian Science nutjobs), but they are clearly basing their delusions on Christian mythology. I guess it's just another case of "hands off" with religion, even when an innocent girl is dead.
Hopefully these psychos will get what's coming to them, but somehow I doubt it.
For an interesting discussion about religious freedom and the denial of medical treatment, I recommend the well-researched and even-handed "God vs. the Gavel - Religion and the Rule of Law" by Marci A. Hamilton.
Edit- An astute friend of mine found a link to a "testimonial" from Leilani Neumann on the cheerily named website AmericasLastDays.com where she details how God sends her visions and gave her magic X-Men powers in order to help her "save" her Catholic friend. Yeah, these folks weren't at all religious... The testimonial is here, if you dare to read it.
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