Remember Pizzagate? Q-Anon? The obsession with the Epstein files? All the overwrought right wing conspiracy theories about pedophilia for the last 10 years?
There’s a BIG exception to their concerns. Guess what it is?
The federal government is suing Washington state over a new law that some Catholic priests refuse to follow.
Senate Bill 5375, signed into law by Gov. Bob Ferguson last month, adds clergy to the list of mandatory reporters of sexual abuse.
That’s common in most other states — but Washington’s new law also applies to what’s shared during confession, a usually confidential sacrament for Catholics where what you say to a priest stays in the confessional booth. Only six other states had similar laws, a federal review in 2019 found.
Washington’s new law was targeted by Trump’s justice department last month, and on Monday, DOJ lawyers argued it violates freedom of religion provisions in the First Amendment.
“Laws that explicitly target religious practices such as the Sacrament of Confession in the Catholic Church have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division wrote in a press release Monday. “Senate Bill 5375 unconstitutionally forces Catholic priests in Washington to choose between their obligations to the Catholic Church and their penitents or face criminal consequences.”
The Governor, a lifelong Catholic said, “It is disappointing, but not surprising, to see the DOJ seek to shield and protect child abusers.”
Definitely not surprising.
The Catholic pedophile scandal is the biggest and most shocking sex scandal in history. It went on for decades probably centuries and the Church fought taking action every step of the way, including today. And they still have their protectors — the allegedly religious, traditional values true believers. Like Donald Trump.
People are supposed to take moral instruction from these people?