Some Catholics Clearly Considered This Less Evil Than Contraception

22 Comments

1. 

   BooMan on March 19, 2012 at 9:57 pm

   So the Dutch have a system where minority parties can block things, too?  At least we’re not alone.  

   It’s hard to imagine not thinking parents should be involved in a decision to castrate their child.  

   • 

     XeckyGilchrist on March 19, 2012 at 10:00 pm

     It’s hard to imagine not thinking parents should be involved in a decision to castrate their child.

     It only makes sense if you take the meaning as “we know that no goddam way are the parents going to allow this so they, ahem, don’t need to know.”

     • 

       BooMan on March 19, 2012 at 10:02 pm

       Does it even make sense then?  How do you keep such a thing a secret?  

       • 

         XeckyGilchrist on March 19, 2012 at 11:13 pm

         Good point. No, it doesn’t make sense in any context.

2. 

   Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 10:18 pm

   It wasnt exactly uncommon at the time, nor was it in any way confined to church run institutions. Irish secular institutions did the same thing (known about for years), and it was practiced in the US as well. See the eugenics movement in the United States for an example. We’ve known about that stuff for years.

   But the guys who did it wore collars so its a shocking story.

   • 

     Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 10:25 pm

     Nor was it confined to catholics or to children

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

     Turing’s homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison.

   • 

     Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 10:30 pm

     http://socialhistory.org/sites/default/files/docs/projects/eugenics.pdf

     “In 1938, after nearly a decade of discussions amongst medical doctors, theologians, jurists and politicians, the then Dutch Minister of Justice approved for the first time the castration of a sex offender who was hospitalized in an asylum for the criminally insane (Noordman, 1989; Oosterhuis, 1992; Koenders, 1996; Verburg, 2001). From that time on until 1968, some 400 such male offenders and at least one female convict–`psychopaths’–who were committed by courts, would `voluntarily’ submit themselves to `therapeutic’ castration, after having obtained permission from the Department of Justice. The figure is an educated guess, based on a 1969 research paper of the Department of Justice (De Boer, 1969) which provides annual numbers that are not entirely identical to annual reports of asylums.

     In addition to those committed by the courts, there was an uncertain number of others who underwent
     surgery without any formal procedure; these included men and women in `mad houses’ and others who through the mediation of psychiatrists or under pressure from their pastors found surgeons willing to carry out the operation”

     • 

       BooMan on March 19, 2012 at 10:33 pm

       The UK Telegraph may be my least favorite source in the whole world, but this isn’t run of the mill:

       Two clergymen were convicted of abuse but Mr Heithuis, a victim, was nonetheless transferred by police to a Catholic psychiatric hospital before being admitted to the St. Joseph Hospital in Veghel later that year.

       There, court papers confirm, he was castrated “at his own request”, despite no submission of his written consent. Sources told Mr Dohmen that the surgical removal of testicles was regarded as a treatment for homosexuality and also as a punishment for those who accused clergy of sexual abuse.

       Sorry, but you can’t shrug that off as normal for the time.  

       • 

         Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 10:42 pm

         Why not? As I;ve establised it was a pretty standard procedure at the time and he certainly calls onder the “there was an uncertain number of others who underwent
         surgery without any formal procedure; ” Part of the pice I just quoted. Or are the 400 court ordered castrations less important than the 10 you need for some nice bigotted catholic bashing?

         Anyway some more, and I’m quoting a comment on a forum here

         http://www.politics.ie/forum/health-social-affairs/184374-castration-homosexuality-21.html#post50829
         14

         Would it have been worse if they’d been castrated to sing in choirs…..there was a lot of that about at one time.?

         Anybody else apart from the RCC still indulging In this practice to ‘cure ‘ homosexuality up until the fifties.?

         The Czechoslovakian government up to mid 50’s and then there head shrink defected to the west to take a post in the Clarke in Toronto University where he did the same until the early 70’s. The catholic church loved his work and the clinicians he trained are some of those who give evidence on behalf of priests in courts.

         Also South Africa did it until mid 60’s in the army. They realised it was a failure and decided to give the homosexuals sex changes instead, which led to a 100% suicide rate amongst the homosexual soldiers and they got a sudden influx of soldiers joining up, who on there first day in the army walked into the head clinician and told them they were homosexual and within about 2 to 5 days were on an operating table, who later turned out to be transsexuals.

         South Africa was completely fu*ked up during that period.

         The clinicians from South Africa fled to Canada when Apartheid ended so as to avoid justice for giving a few thousand homosexual soldiers sex changes against there will.

         I remember listening to a talk on it in a human rights and equality meeting and the shock on everyone’s faces was a picture.

         So yeah goddless commies were doing it, and the South africans before they upgraded to mandated sex changes. but they werent wearing collars so no-one gives a crap.

         • 

           BooMan on March 19, 2012 at 11:18 pm

           the punishment for accusing priests of molesting you was to be institutionalized as a psychotic and castrated.  And you have now dedicated something like eight comments to dismissing this as unremarkable.  

         • 

           Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 11:45 pm

           Really? So all of the 400 confirmed cases that the courts ordered and the unknown numbers that the courts didn’t but it was performed anyway had all accused priests of sexually abusing them?

           The 6 comments I gave shows that the castration for homosexuality and for other forms of deviancy was a common thing worldwide and in Holland at the time, and was done by a lot of people other than the Catholic Church. And we dont know why it happened to Henk Heithuis. The newspaper article carefully avoids saying why it happened. It dosent even say that Heithuis said it happened becasue he got 2 priests convicted of abuse. It just drops dark hints but is careful not to say that. It also said he was castrated after bieng moved FROM a catholic Psychiatric hospital TO a secular one. If the church was going to punish him why didn’t they do it at the catholic hospital? Hello?

           I dont know why he was castrated any more than you do. All I know is that his case was one of hundreds of people that were castrated in holland at the time, and similar cases happened worldwide. The only reason the papers are even reporting this is becasue of the guys with collars. Maybe it will get the Dutch talking about how they used to treat Homosexuals and the Insane in their society in the 1950s, but I’m not holding my breath.

           Sheesh.

     • 

       Oui on March 20, 2012 at 2:27 am

       .
       Playing out party politics on such an horrific issue is not uncommon. As recently as in the ’90s a Labor Party senator Brongersma and his party Partij van de Arbeid attempted to lower the age of “consensual” sex with minors. After his death people realised he was an advocate of freedom for sex with minors as being unharmful (pedophile).

       There has been an independent inquiry into the Catholic Church cover-up of priests raping boys, see the Deetman Report [864 pages pdf file].

       Even today, in the universal healthcare package one can get rid of his homosexuality for free. No cost is involved to get rid of your disease through christian homotherapy.

       Yep, the world community is pretty f**ked up throughout history and I’m not very happy about today’s situation either. Still prefer Dutch society above the biased and hatred in US free society and its homophobia.

       "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

   • 

     Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 10:51 pm

     This is what wikipedia has to say on compulsary sterilisation in the US.

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States#Compulsory_sterilization

     Compulsory sterilization

     In 1907, Indiana passed the first eugenics-based compulsory sterilization law in the world. Thirty U.S. states would soon follow their lead.[44][45] Although the law was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1921,[46] the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in 1927.[47]

     Some states sterilized “imbeciles” for much of the 20th century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case that the state of Virginia could sterilize those it thought unfit. Although compulsory sterilization is now considered an abuse of human rights, Buck v. Bell was never overturned, and Virginia did not repeal its sterilization law until 1974.[48] The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States.[49] Beginning around 1930, there was a steady increase in the percentage of women sterilized, and in a few states only young women were sterilized. From 1930 to the 1960s, sterilizations were performed on many more institutionalized women than men.[25] By 1961, 61 percent of the 62,162 total eugenic sterilizations in the United States were performed on women.[25] A favorable report on the results of sterilization in California, the state with the most sterilizations by far, was published in book form by the biologist Paul Popenoe and was widely cited by the Nazi government as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane.[50][51]

     Men and women were compulsorily sterilized for different reasons. Men were sterilized to treat their aggression and to eliminate their criminal behavior, while women were sterilized to control the results of their sexuality.[52] Since women bore children, eugenicists held women more accountable than men for the reproduction of the less “desirable” members of society.[25] Eugenicists therefore predominately targeted women in their efforts to regulate the birth rate, to “protect” white racial health, and weed out the “defectives” of society.[25]

     A 1927 Fortune magazine poll found that 2/3 of respondents supported eugenic sterilization of “mental defectives”, 63% supported sterilization of criminals, and only 15% opposed both.[53]

     Although the following events were not explicitly justified through the by-now-discredited eugenics movement, they certainly fit the older pattern. In 1970’s, several activists and women’s rights groups discovered several physicians to be performing coerced sterilizations of specific ethnic groups of society. All were abuses of poor, nonwhite, or mentally retarded women, while no abuses against white or middle-class women were recorded.[54]

     For example, in 1972, United States Senate committee testimony brought to light that at least 2,000 involuntary sterilizations had been performed on poor black women without their consent or knowledge. An investigation revealed that the surgeries were all performed in the South, and were all performed on black welfare mothers with multiple children. Testimony revealed that many of these women were threatened with an end to their welfare benefits until they consented to sterilization.[55] These surgeries were instances of sterilization abuse, a term applied to any sterilization performed without the consent or knowledge of the recipient, or in which the recipient is pressured into accepting the surgery. Because the funds used to carry out the surgeries came from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, the sterilization abuse raised older suspicions, especially amongst the black community, that “federal programs were underwriting eugenicists who wanted to impose their views about population quality on minorities and poor women.”[25]

     Native American women were also victims of sterilization abuse up into the 1970s.[56] The organization WARN (Women of All Red Nations) publicized that Native American women were threatened that, if they had more children, they would be denied welfare benefits. The Indian Health Service also repeatedly refused to deliver Native American babies until their mothers, in labor, consented to sterilization. Many Native American women unknowingly gave consent, since directions were not given in their native language. According to the General Accounting Office, an estimate of 3,406 Indian women were sterilized.[56] The General Accounting Office stated that the Indian Health Service had not followed the necessary regulations, and that the “informed consent forms did not adhere to the standards set by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).”[57]

     If you’ve never heard of this, now you know how they kept this a secret. Its an absolute horror story.

     • 

       Errol on March 19, 2012 at 11:04 pm

       what does this have to do with priests abusing?

       • 

         Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 11:13 pm

         Dont you mean “What does that have to do with some priests practicing what was bieng done routinely in secular institutions world wide at the time? And what was bieng routinely ordered by dutch courts at the time?”

         70 years ago, when this happened, everybody was doing it. The shocking thing is that they only found 10 boys in Catholic care that it happened to, which probably means that the rate that castration happened could very well be lower in Church institutions, which would be the ultimate irony.

         • 

           Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 11:15 pm

           I mean 60 years ago, of course.

         • 

           Errol on March 19, 2012 at 11:54 pm

           these sterilizations were terrible but they were women, it’s not castration of boys who told on priests abusing them.

     • 

       Oui on March 20, 2012 at 4:33 am

       .
       With today’s knowledge judging our past is just not right. This is the official Dutch medical organ, a publication treating epilepsy throughout the last 150 years. The Nazi ideal of a pure Aryan race did not stand by itself in Germany, Europe or the United States. Abnormalities and deformaties  should be annihilated, at least not allowed to be reproduced.

       The history of epilepsy in the Dutch Journal of Medicine

       In this magazine is from the first vintage in 1857, wrote extensively about epilepsy. “Epilepsy is not a disease, its manifestations are storm signals for the danger that threatens the central nervous system ‘ and ‘epilepsy is an experiment of nature on the cerebral functions’ are examples of thoughts about the disease.

       It was not uncommon for people suffering from epilepsy to enter an psychiatric institution. Epilepsy was the Law on the lunatic Being even considered a form of insanity, which lasted until 1875. Most publications were in psychiatric hospitals come, therefore, a wrong impression created in the frequency of additional psychiatric disorders, which also led to an assumed heritability of 60 to 80, while the examination of a representative group of patients was 5 to 8. Finding these low figures was of great importance, because the so-called high risk of inheritance in some countries had led to imprisonment, castration or a marriage ban. “Well, I must advise against epilepsy sufferers to marry, at least produce children. And the closest relatives of these patients should certainly be informed that more likely to get children with epilepsy , so I also considers itself advisable for them to refrain from reproduction.  

       "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

3. 

   Errol on March 19, 2012 at 11:08 pm

   OT: I interrupt this bad news with some good news
   http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/19/2703029/us-department-of-justice-fbi-and.html
   doj and fbi investigating trayvon death

   • 

     Suranis1 on March 19, 2012 at 11:14 pm

     Fantastic.

   • 

     on March 20, 2012 at 10:43 am

     appears more and more to be really the FL “Finish off the wounded so they cannot testify”. This armed self-appointed “police” paranoid insane wack was NOT charged because there was no evidence that he was not telling the truth. Of course, he shot and killed the other party.

     This should be a chilling moment for any 2nd amendment wack. Instead, the 2nd amendment wacks merely are doubling down and calling for more protection for armed lunatics from teenagers who are involved in “Skittles concealed carry.”

     • 

       Oui on March 20, 2012 at 1:31 pm

       .

       Grand jury called in Trayvon Martin case

       Attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents Martin’s parents, said the teenager was on the phone with his girlfriend back home in Miami when he told her he was being followed. She said Martin told her someone was following him and that he was going to try to lose him. He thought he had lost Zimmerman but hadn’t.

       “He says, ‘Oh he’s right behind me, he’s right behind me again,'” Crump said the girl told him. “She says run. He says I’m not going to run I’m just going to walk fast. She hears Trayvon say, ‘Why are you following me?’ Other voice says, ‘What are you doing around here?'”

       She told Crump they both repeated themselves and then she heard a scuffle begin “because (Martin’s) voice changes like something interrupted his speech.” She heard an altercation and then the phone call was cut off. Within moments, according to Crump’s timeline, Martin was shot. She didn’t hear the gunfire.

       Friend on Phone with Teen Before Death Recalls Final Moments

       • Prosecute the killer of our son, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin – 578,700 signatures [change.org]

       "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."