I read the thread, Saintly_Loser, and participated in it. What happened is this:
- In post #117, you introduced the subject of your children, in the context of your not having particular qualms about their being in the company of Catholic priests of your acquaintaince. (Which, fine, your choice, but IMO if you’re voluntarily appealing to details of your IRL personal life to back up your expression of your views as a poster, those details become part of the discussion.)
- In post #173, ZosterSandstorm (whom, by the way, nobody in their right mind could possibly mistake for any kind of advocate of “progressive orthodoxy”), responded to your further remark about trusting your children with your priest friend by citing Leviticus 18:21, “Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Moloch”.
Which to me seemed very plainly to be an accusation of colluding with an innately evil institution that destroys children. Which is indeed an insulting thing to say about the Catholic Church, but is not the same thing as an accusation that you personally were deliberately and knowingly authorizing or encouraging the rape of your children. - In post #174, you fumed that that response “was coming awfully close to truly unacceptable”, apparently because you interpreted it as the latter kind of accusation rather than the former. (You had gotten similarly shirty in post #156 when Euphonious_Polemic quoted Jeremiah 5:21 at you.)
- In post #175, ZS repeated his accusation that you were “someone who is performatively handing his kids over to Catholic priests to prove his loyalty to the group”. Again, that strikes me as an accusation of collusion with an evil institution that’s dangerous to kids, but not an accusation that you’re literally seeking or condoning the rape of your kids.
- In post #257, after continuing to argue on many related themes with several other posters including ZS, you suddenly declared that ZS “has already said that I willingly and knowingly hand my own children over to child molesters”. And you’ve been swanning around on your cross about it ever since.
Look, Saintly_Loser, I took your side for several posts in that thread where I thought you were being unfairly misinterpreted, and I sure don’t hold any brief for the vast majority of ZosterSandstorm’s views, including his intemperate anti-Catholicism. (Nor has ZS gotten a free pass from many other posters, either for stuff he’s said to you or for his other intemperate views.)
But I’m tired of your extended martyr schtick on this subject, and I wasn’t particularly impressed in that thread by your nitpickery in defense of the Church. It was a Pit thread started in some quite justifiable rage against large-scale institutional misconduct of the worst kind, and you didn’t contribute much to it with your “Well, actually” and “Not all priests” demurs. I don’t defend the anti-Church badmouthing of many posters as any kind of constructive argument, but AFAICT it was a legitimate subject of typical froth-mouthed Pit invective.
You were miffed, as per your post #156, because you felt you “approached this thread in the spirit of discussion” and “haven’t insulted anyone” and “haven’t misrepresented anything anyone said” and “haven’t said anything that isn’t true”. Well, Saintly_Loser, speaking as another Doper who generally approaches even Pit threads in the spirit of discussion, and doesn’t generally engage in personal insults, and tries hard not to misrepresent anything anyone says and not to say anything that isn’t true, I say don’t show up to a fucking snake fight if you’re scared of getting bit.
And it’s just outright absurd for anyone to argue that that particular snake fight constitutes any kind of evidence that “progressive orthodoxy” is unfairly privileged on the SDMB. ZosterSandstorm, progressive orthodoxy? It is to laugh.