One of the lessons we were all supposed to have learned from the Vietnam War was that we shouldn’t “blame the troops.” After all, it wasn’t their dumbass decision to go invade some country that never attacked us and wasn’t likely to attack us.
Indeed, they were simply following the orders of their superiors, and faced stern punishment if they refused. Add to that the fact that many (but not most) servicemen who served in Vietnam were drafted into the military (even before they were allowed to vote!), and it does seem odd to blame the troops for the bad decision to go to war and the poor strategic choices made along the way.
On the other hand, war crimes were committed in Vietnam, and even if it was “legal” to do so in some cases, the fact is that American troops did kill people — certainly hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions of Vietnamese died in the war. Even if the were only following orders, someone did all that killing, and I believe we commonly call that someone “the troops.”
Similarly, whenever some Christian or Muslim leader makes a dumb move, should we really blame the everyday pastors, priests, and imams? After all, they are sworn to uphold the tenets of their religion even if they personally might question them. As Greta Christina recently argued, it may not be right to ridicule a priest caught in a compromising (sexual) position. After all, Greta argues, the priest was raised in the Catholic church, and wasn’t himself responsible for church-wide stances on sexual behavior.
On the other hand, no one forced him to join the clergy and take a vow of celibacy. Presumably this is something the priest chose for himself. Shouldn’t we hold him accountable for the inherent contradiction between his own actions and his publicly-held opinions about the private behavior of others?
I haven’t read the details of the event (apparently he was engaged in some sort of sexual activity that required a 911 call for extrication), but here’s what Greta has to say:
We don’t know anything about this priest other than what he said in the 911 call, and we don’t know whether he was in a conservative church that practiced a lot of sexual shaming, or a more inclusive one that cherry-picked out the nasty pits of Catholic sexual shame. But he had perpetuated an institution — the Catholic Church — that’s created pointless sexual guilt for exactly the kinds of activities he was engaging in. So on at least some level, he was a hypocrite. And the punishment for religious hypocrisy — according to these people on my Facebook page — should be the public shaming of his private sexuality, and of his call for help. Even if the result is that other people with unconventional sexualities are now more afraid to call 911 if they need help, for fear that they’ll be exposed and humiliated… that’s okay. That’s a price these folks are willing to pay, if it means we can expose a religious sexual hypocrite. Another one. This week.
This is actually a somewhat different scenario than the Vietnam War. Indeed, it’s even different from the wars in Afghanistan in Iraq (where the American troops were all volunteers), in that, presumably, the sexual activity the priest was engaged in was consensual (whereas the war victims clearly didn’t want to be shot, tortured, or mutilated). As Greta points out, it’s one thing to criticize an individual for a transgression we all believe to be wrong — like pedophilia or murder — but it’s something else entirely to blame a clergyman for an activity that, from a rational perspective, is perfectly acceptable.
On the other hand, I’m most definitely not going to actively support this guy either. Either he disagrees with his church’s long-standing and open opposition to his preferred sexual activity, or he agrees with it and yet somehow can’t control his own sexual behavior. In either case, he shouldn’t be a church leader. In that way, this is like the Iraq / Afghanistan case. I’m not going to be donating a lot of my time and efforts to “supporting the troops” when I don’t agree with their mission and that’s the mission they explicitly signed up for. Whether they privately disagree with the mission doesn’t actually play into my decision of whether or not to “support” them. The fact is, they are now contributing to an effort that is causing massive harm. I’m not going to support it.
I do have a little more compassion for religious followers (as opposed to leaders). They’re kind of like the daughter of soldier who’s been deployed for 3 of the 4 years of her life. She didn’t sign up to be the daughter of soldier, but she has to live with the consequences of her parent’s decision. Many children are brought up in religious faiths and have little choice in the matter. If they choose to leave the faith as adults, that may also be a decision to leave their families. It’s not easy, and it’s not a decision that was of their own making. I have loads of compassion for those folks. For clergy, not so much.
Carolina Atheist 