Newest Catholic Defense - Priests Aren't Pedophiles, They're Gay

Last Night on Larry King Live a man named Bill Donohue employed an unusual tactic in the widespread attempt by representatives of the Catholic Church to downplay the role of priests in the sexual abuse of minors that has been occurring for decades if not centuries. He claimed that the priests were not, in fact, pedophiles as they have so unfairly been labeled, but actually homosexuals. He bases this claim on the fact that pedophiles are sexually aroused by pre-pubescent children, but most of the priests who have been accused of improper or criminal behavior targeted post-pubescent children, the majority of whom were males. So these priests were not pedophiles but simply gay men who were doing, I suppose, what all gay men do according to Mr. Donohue.

On one hand, he does have a point. Most mental health experts consider pedophilia to be the attraction to pre-pubescent children. Legally, however, a child is someone who has not yet reached the age of consent, which in most states is 18. Therefore, people who sexually abuse children under the age of 18 are legally considered to be pedophiles. Although Mr. Donohue's logic is both disturbing in its sterility and shocking in its callousness, I can see how people in his awkward position might try to deflect some of the negative attention the Church is receiving right now in any way possible.

So maybe we should change what we are calling these priests, as the term "pedophile" might not be entirely accurate. Might I suggest rapist? Molester? Criminal? Perpetrator of sexual assault of children? But not homosexual. A homosexual is someone who is attracted to members of their same sex. As with the term heterosexual, the definition does NOT include a free pass to force a child (by the legal definition) to commit a sexual act. A homosexual or a heterosexual who engages is sexual activity with another consenting adult is a normal human. A homosexual or heterosexual who engages in any sexual act with a child, who is unable to consent either legally or intellectually or emotionally, is a criminal.

So, Mr. Donohue, let's not lump adults who live moral, healthy, and non-criminal lives in with the priests who committed these crimes. But ok, at your suggestion I will refrain from calling all of the criminal priests pedophiles.

Rapist it is.

Who Is More Important For Your Health - Your Doctor or the Drugmaker?

I don't know that anyone would argue with the fact that we are in a financial crisis in the United States, both governmental and for many of us personal. There is record unemployment, record rates of home foreclosures, and ridiculous budget deficits on both the state and federal levels. Many of us are struggling to stay alive financially, keep our businesses from folding, hoping that we won't be one of the unlucky people who is laid off when our employer has to cut corners. The people that still have jobs that offer health care insurance feel lucky, and the people who don't have health insurance secretly say a prayer to stay healthy every night, lest they follow the fastest route to bankruptcy in this country - overwhelming medical bills.

Things aren't so bad though if you are a pharmaceutical company. For example, AstraZeneca, the makers of such medications as Prilosec, Zestril, Rhinocort, Seroquel, and this year a lot of H1N1 vaccine, had a 9% increase in revenue in the US in 2009. In terms of profit, AstraZeneca posted a profit for 2009 of over $9 billion. That's "core operating profit" minus the" adjustments to core operating profit". In 2008, the CEO of AstraZeneca received a salary of $4.7 million, and the next two top earners at AZ were well above the $1 million mark. Now, that's not as ridiculously high as the salaries of certain bank CEOs in the news recently, but it's a nice chunk of change. Obviously life is very good if you are a drug company executive. (And although I have singled out AstraZeneca, it's just because I didn't want to have to make myself ill by listing all of the profits of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world).

In comparison, life is not as good if you are a doctor. Yes, I readily admit that as doctors, we have really good job security overall - there is always a need for physicians, even if it might mean you have to move. We also tend to have great health insurance offered as a benefit to us, which is very fortunate. And for the most part we make great salaries (some of us greater than others, of course). But doctor's salaries haven't even kept up with inflation in the past decade. And we don't belong to companies that post record profits - pretty much all the money we bring in goes to paying the salaries of all the people in the clinical, medical records, and administration departments, the health and malpractice insurances of everyone, the rent, etc.

So when I hear that yet again, the government's plan to save money for Medicare is to cut physician's reimbursement, most recently a proposed 20%, I am forced to ask why cut the amount paid to the doctors rather than the amount paid to the pharmaceutical companies? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the 2003 Congress (which had a Republican majority) passed a bill that prohibited Medicare from getting the best deals on pharmaceuticals that it could. Yes, unlike the Veteran's Administration and Medicaid, who both smartly negotiate with the drug companies to get the best possible price for the medications that they have to pay for out of their limited budgets, Medicare instead is NOT ALLOWED to get better prices from the drugs companies, even though it is buying those drugs in bulk quantities that make the jumbo toilet paper packs from Costco look like child's play.

I'm sorry, but I don't know anyone who walks into a car dealership and says "No, no, I don't want to try to get a better price on that car. I am happy to pay the price that you have listed right there on the sticker". If you did that, you would be considered a fool. But the car dealership would be very happy that you were willing to be a sucker. And that is exactly the relationship the big pharmaceutical companies have with Medicare. Medicare, thanks to the Republican Congress of 2003, is a multimillion dollar sucker. P.T. Barnum would be proud.

Given that no one likes to be made the fool, I have to ask why the government keeps a law that so obviously goes against logic. Well, I can give you 266.8 million reasons. In 2009, the pharmaceutical and health products industry spent $266.8 million dollars lobbying the federal government to make sure that their interests were "represented" by the lawmakers they influenced . And just in case you are curious, AstraZeneca spent just under $6 million in 2009 for lobbying and even has a lobbyist who specifically lobbies on their behalf for "Medicare Part D Non-Interference", secret code for not changing the great deal the drug companies have with Medicare.

It seems to me that there is a very obvious way to reduce the budget of Medicare without hurting the salaries of individual doctors, and with perhaps the bonus of saving money for Medicare recipients who pay in full or in part for their medications. Admittedly, the pharmaceutical companies will not be happy with any decrease in their profits. But I have to ask myself, who do I think is ultimately more important, and more worthy of compensation? Is it the doctor, the person I see face-to-face perhaps for decades of my life; my partner in my health; the person who was awake with me in the middle of the night to deliver my baby, or to admit me to the hospital when I had a heart attack; the man or woman I see yearly at an office visit to make sure that I am, indeed, staying healthy? Or is it the nameless (but wealthy and therefore powerful) drug company, that makes a medication that might easily be substituted by another equally if not more effective medication that costs less money?

And yes, I acknowledge fully that there are medications out there that are made by a drug company that do not have an equal made by anyone else, and that can sometimes save someone's life. But we should not forget that without a doctor, those drugs would never get used. After all, it is the doctor that must prescribe them. The pharmaceutical companies would have no profits from prescription drug manufacturing if not for us. When I put it like that, I think the drug companies would be happy to take a small cut in profits in order to save doctors from having to endure more pay cuts.

Like I said, P.T. Barnum would be proud.

Justice Isn't Blind Anymore

Yesterday, my fragile sense of confidence in the sound and fair foundations of the American government was completely and forever shattered. While I am not a scholar of the Constitution, having only studied it in high school and college, I know what all Americans know (or at least, should know). The founding fathers of this nation designed a government that would keep one person from having too much power, would allow the citizens to elect their representatives to act for them in the governing body, and would uphold the rights that each person was granted in this newly forming country. Those rights were carefully and explicitly defined in the Bill of Rights about a decade later, at least as far as they could be defined by a bunch of white men who were living before indoor plumbing even existed. And to guarantee that the governing bodies were upholding those rights and following the laws laid out in the Constitution, those men even came up with a system that involved judges, who I suppose they felt were the most impartial, best educated, and noble of people. The Supreme Court of the United States was intended to be the final voice of reason and fairness and law in this land. The nine people appointed to that most revered of benches are placed there for the specific purpose of interpreting the Constitution as it was written, without personal bias, without prejudice, without the intent to act out their own will.

The saying "justice is blind" and the statues of the lady with the blindfold did, until now, mostly ring true. But justice on the Supreme Court isn't blind anymore - now we know it sees the color green.

I don't know exactly how it happened - what machinations and convolutions were involved to get from point A (the corporations with all the money) to point B (the 5 Justices that decided that corporations are the same as individual people), but it happened. Money, it seems, really can buy everything now. It will now be able to buy elections, and as the director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said, "we won't have the senator from Arkansas or the congressman from North Carolina, but the senator from Wal-Mart and the congressman from Bank of America". Although the founding fathers of the United States of America didn't have any notion that the internet, cell phones, or flush toilets would be available to almost every American someday, they certainly knew what business was, and what powerful groups with money were, and yes, they even know what "corporations" were. In fact, corporate entities had been around for centuries by the time Jefferson et al were writing the Constitution, although originally they were called "Chartered Companies". In fact, I can guarantee that all of the founding fathers were familiar with the king of corporations back then - the British East India Company - which was infamous for its greed, exploitation, ruthless business practices, price gouging, and astronomical profits. Remember the Boston Tea Party? The tea that was dumped in the harbor was tea from none other than the British East India Company.

The fact that the Constitution was not written to give specific rights to corporations, and in fact doesn't even mention corporations, even though they existed at the time, were well known and powerful, says something to me. It tells me that the authors of the Constitution didn't want to give any special rights or privileges to corporate entities. They wanted to give rights to individual people. Every right detailed in the Bill of Rights refers to the rights of individuals, not corporations. And knowing how the men who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights felt about corporations back then, I am certain that they did not want the Constitution or the Bill of Rights to be used to protect those entities.

Sadly, since I now know that the majority of our Supreme Court believes that a corporation is a person, and deserves the same rights as an individual person according to the Bill of Rights (even though it can't breathe, live independently in its own house, talk with others, cast a vote in an election, get married, etc) I know that it is a small step - a dangerously small step - to the conclusion that an embryo or a fetus is a person, and deserves all the rights that we apparently can't guarantee its mother. The reversal of Roe vs. Wade is on the horizon, and since the Supreme Court does not seem to believe that they themselves need to uphold the intent, spirit, or letter of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, many more changes that screw us individual people may be coming as well.

So thanks, "Justice" Kennedy, "Chief Justice" Roberts, "Justice" Alito, "Justice" Thomas, and "Justice" Scalia, for making it clear that your agenda is not to uphold the laws or rights of the people of this potentially great country, but to uphold the rights of the greedy corporations who are inexplicably doing well financially at a time when us little people are struggling. I know this is not what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison envisioned. At least they're dead and they don't have to live with the outcome of this catastrophic decision like all of us voting Americans do.