Tuesday night at Fullerton Union High School in Orange County, California. The Senior boys hold their annual mock pageant, the ‘Mr. Fullerton’ competition. In the question-and-answer session, one young man is asked about his future.

When asked where he saw himself in ten years, the student replied that “he hoped to find the love of his life, marry him and hoped gay marriage would be legal . . “

——————-AND THAT’S WHEN OUR HERO SPRANG INTO ACTION——————–

. . while the student was giving his answer, “assistant principal Joe Abell came on stage in front of the hundreds of people in attendance and interrupted [the student’s] speech and disqualified him from the competition . .”

If that isn’t courage. Hearing the geh, walking on stage, halting the event, singling out the speaker, and ejecting him for saying he’d like to fall in love and get married. What guts it takes to punish young men for talking about their hopes and dreams. Today, Steely Old Joe mounted an assault on the P.A. so he could apologize to both the student and the school.

A group of students are already planning a protest campaign against the administrator, though, and plan to deliver letters addressed to the school employee asking “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”

That’s a beautiful thing.

Here comes the latest attempt to find a convenient fall guy:

Pope Blames Child Abuse Scandal on Society
Benedict XVI Says Mistreatment of Children Frighteningly Common in Secular Society, Child Porn Considered Normal
CBS News | Dec 12, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican officials Monday that they must reflect on the church’s culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common . .

. . that the scandal must be seen in a broader social context, in which child pornography is seemingly considered normal by society and drug use and sexual tourism are on the rise.

“The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times,” Benedict said.

Terrifying? To the people who’ve been doing it or covering it up for centuries? In all our lives, if there was a place where one was guaranteed to come across the sexual “destruction of children” who were “reduced to articles of merchandise,” it was the Catholic Church.

Childhood sexual abuse has been for so long an endemic but occult practice in the Church that there’s no way for them to publicly acknowledge it. It shows up in one place, so they say it was isolated. It shows up in another, so they say it was a bigger tragedy than they knew. It shows up on another continent, so they say they need time to assess their policies.

It just goes on and on, they refuse to see themselves for who they’ve really been. This is what you call denial. Witness the Pope and other church leaders currently in a phase where the modern world is the culprit.

And as you well know, the Catholic Church hangs on every little wink and nod of the secular world around them, so they can hardly be blamed for merely acting like everybody else:

Mexico bishop says porn, tv to blame for priest abuse
Miguel Angel Gutierrez and Cyntia Barrera Diaz | Apr 16, 2010

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A prominent Roman Catholic bishop in Mexico blamed eroticism on television and Internet pornography for child abuse by priests, in the latest incendiary comments on sex scandals in the church.

“With so much invasion of eroticism, sometimes it’s not easy to stay celibate or to respect children,” Bishop Felipe Arizmendi said during an annual meeting of Mexican bishops near Mexico City on Thursday.

. . and . .

Pope’s No. 2: Pedophilia linked to homosexuality
By BRAD HAYNES (AP) | Dec 12, 2009

SANTIAGO, Chile — The Vatican’s second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests . .

“Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true,” said [Cardinal Tarcisio] Bertone. “That is the problem.”

So, I ask you, you modern people, with your internet surfing and fancy blog reading — which of these things causes you to sexually assault children? The growing normalcy of child molestation, the rise of drug use, the popularity of sexual tourism, naked people on the TV, dirty people on the internet, or homosexuality?

Whaddya mean, the very thought of it still makes you want to puke? You’re no regular, normal person, like a Catholic priest.

It’s about time. Frustrated with the Church’s meaningless promises of cooperation with authorities, and shocked, as all other Belgians were, to hear of the 73 year-old Bishop of Bruges’ admittance of serial child molestation, the police apparently had had enough. Last Thursday, in Brussels and Leuven, they took matters into their own hands:

Belgian Catholic bishops angered by police raids
Friday, 25 June 2010 12:59

. . On Thursday, the police carried out a series of raids as part of an investigation into allegations of abuse committed by priests.

The Church’s headquarters, the Palace of the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, was sealed off, while officers searched for related material. Bishops meeting there were barred from leaving the premises or telephoning outside for several hours.

Officers also raided the nearby home of the recently retired archbishop of Belgium, Cardinal Godfried Danneels, seizing paperwork and his computer . .

In Leuven, investigators seized all 475 dossiers from the offices of the Church commission tracking complaints and compiling evidence about clerical sexual abuse. The computer of the commission’s chairman was also taken . .

“This violates the right to confidentiality of victims who have contacted the commission,” he said. “Such acts greatly complicate the necessary and excellent work of the committee.”

You have got to be kidding me. There’s a clear pattern of behavior here regarding the Church.

It goes something like this: the molestations and rapes become known, usually first within the Church. One or two people are made aware of them, but the matter is pushed aside. A few years later, the allegations re-surface, probably with a lower level church person.

Another high-level person or two become aware of the crimes, and some time passes, but the matter is again pushed aside.

The allegations become known outside the Church. Now several people have to become involved. Communications and reports are passed around for months on end. After a year or two, the small clamor begins to die down, and the matter is effectively pushed aside. The allegations re-surface publicly again as part of a whole group of similar crimes. Well, now, this is serious, right? Must be time for a commission.

Who are they kidding? When the Bishop of Bruges(!) himself admits to being a serial child molester, the jig is up. Belgian authorities and society have every right to force the Church to surrender everything they’ve ever known about these miserable sexual predators.

Belgian bishop Roger Vangheluwe resigns over abuse of boy
Published: 6:17PM BST 23 Apr 2010

The resignation of Roger Vangheluwe, 73, the Bishop of Bruges since 1984, was the first from Belgium since a child abuse scandal began testing the Catholic Church several months ago in Europe and the United States . .

“When I was not yet a bishop, and some time later, I abused a boy,” Vangheluwe said in the statement.

“This has marked the victim forever. The wound does not heal. Neither in me nor the victim,” Vangheluwe’s statement said . .

. . and there’s another pattern of behavior here. Who is sad? Who feels bad? Who again is the victim?

Pope Benedict attacks Belgium police for raiding suspected pedophile priests
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, June 27th, 2010 — 4:40 pm

. . “I want to express… my closeness and solidarity in this moment of sadness, in which, with certain surprising and deplorable methods, searches were carried out including in the Mechelen cathedral and in the premises where the Belgian episcopate was meeting in plenary session,” [Pope Benedict] said . .

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said Saturday the detention of bishops was “serious and unbelievable”, likening it to the practices of communist regimes.

As I opined before, until the Church shows the respect towards society and its laws they very much deserve, the clashes between it and the various wronged states, and its citizens, will only grow nastier and more incendiary.

I have no doubt that if these people were murderers, the Church would find a way to do the right thing. But because Church officials (wrongly) think these people are merely indulging in sexual shenanigans, that they’re just your garden variety fallible mortals, the Church has become part of an obscene conspiracy. It’s doing evil.