Patricia Ireland Quotes
The opposition has moved from a blaming the victim to blaming the victim's advocate's statistics. Irrespective of what the numbers are, it's far too many.
Ireland, Patricia. What Women Want. Dutton, 1996.
Pakistan follows a version of Islamic Law—Sharia—which provides that a man can be convicted of rape only if there are at least 4 male witnesses. Since it is virtually impossible to ever get 4 witnesses to a crime like that, there will never be a conviction. However, the complaining victim runs two additional dangers. First she is admitting to fornication and or adultery and can be jailed or even killed for that. Further, Pakistan males regard her as a prostitute and the police will also rape her very often.
Reacting to his being denied a permit to carry a handgun by the New York City police:
Alexie, an American Indian, studied wrote about the phenomenon whereby the Indians who were brutalized and attacked by whites with modern weapons and other technological advantages, in the process of defending themselves and their way of life became oppressors to whites in many situations where they could dominate a local scene. Likewise, the Israelis, who were totally oppressed in the Middle East for years and dominated by the more numerous Arabs with over a dozen established national armies attacking the Jewish civilian population when Israel first became a state. However the Jews survived and each time the Arabs attacked and further oppressed the Israelis, the Jews became stronger until at some point the became oppressors of many of the Arabs. The oppressors became the oppressed and vica versa.
The Federalists had a majority of both Houses of Congress and the Presidency with George Washington. The establishment of respect for minority views had not yet been established as a tradition. The Anti-Federalists, in order to prevent the Federalists from imposing their own legislation in all fields, used every parliamentary maneuver and delaying tactic. The public, after a few years of the Federalist high-handedness, replaced them with the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists were so badly beaten and unpopular that the party was destroyed, never to rise again.
This sad quotation illustrates how some of the leaders of the Church were so out of touch with law and morality. The Archbishop justified the archdiocesan cover-up of the crimes of sexually predatory priests and actually tried to lay much of the responsibility on children who might have been streetwise. It is almost like the Priests were seduced. The typical action of the church authorities was to transfer the sexually predatory priest to another assignment where in most cases he continued the predation with other children. Even if the children were very sexually active, the law is that they are under the age of consent and may not consent to sexual activity. Any adult having sex with a teen ager is guilty of statutory rape. However, the Church authorities decided in many cases that the age of consent was 12 contrary to state law in most states. Therefore in their minds there was no crime because the child was old enough to consent so they felt justified in not referring the crime to the police. See {633188} . Of course, few of the child victims of the priests were sexually sophisticated. Most were innocent and totally intimidated by the high spiritual and community role of the priest. Weakland was removed from his position of authority as part of the Church program to eliminate the problem of predatory priests and irresponsible bishops.
Patricia Ireland is a U.S. administrator and feminist. She served as president of the National Organization for Women from 1991 to 2001 and published an autobiography, What Women Want, in 1996.
