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This on it's own doesn't tell us anything though. Building a world view in which Catholic priests are just perverted child abusers intentionally trying to prey on children is also supported under this criteria. After all there are cases of Catholic priests doing precisely that.
That it NEVER happens is far too broad a criteria, because it will condemn almost every group where any single member is guilty of some vile behaviour. Police, clergy, trans people, women, men, lollipop ladies, politicians, scout leaders, teachers, French people, Irish people, Catholics, Protestants, German people, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Humans.
There's plenty of people all too happy to say that the Catholic Church is nothing but an enabling network of abuse. The nuttier pro-aborts like to go on about how the only reason the Catholic Church is anti-abortion is so that the clergy will have a fresh supply of children to abuse.
It's a good analogy, though, since at the start there were people defending paedophile priests on the grounds that if we didn't, then the enemies of the Church would just use that as a means of attacking all clergy and the Church itself. I think the experience of the Catholic abuse scandals should break the pro-trans rights people out of that mindset for their own problems. Clean house, because sticking with "okay so X says they're trans and they're also crazy and indeed creepy but we have to defend them or else the bigots who hate all trans people will win" is not a winning strategy.
Why would you expect trans activists to do better than an organization dedicated to serving the highest moral agent?
Like you say, its the normal tribal reaction to your own side doing something wrong.
Which means it doesn't really tell you anything about the merits of the group using it. Presumably you think the Catholic church is more right than the trans movement, but if they both fell into the same trap (and I agree it is a bad look!) then using it as a weapon just looks like you are holding the side you don't like to standards your own side could not live up to.
I'm saying they should learn from the mistakes we made.
Ahh. An optimist! I think the problem is I am not confident the Catholic Church was initially wrong (or has actually made real change, but that is a different post).
As you point out the predictions were true, admitting the issue was indeed used as ammunition against the Church.
We evolved these social defense mechanisms for a reason. That many people are not good with base rates, that it really did damage the Church significantly. A better solution (from the point of view of protecting the Churchs mission) might have been to close ranks while internally trying to reduce the problem.
As long as you have a Catholic church some priests (and people pretending!) are going to do bad things. The only thing you can control is what level of bad things are worth its continuing mission. And the same applies to trans people. Some number of either real or fake trans people will do bad things. What people say, or have said is mostly irrelevant to the current situation.
If the pope said that no priests would ever abuse a child, the fact 0.000001% do, may not be a good argument for dissolving the clergy even given the pope was strictly wrong.
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And they were correct, trivially so in fact.
Provided you can paper over the cracks with your political power, it is just as much a winning strategy as doing the right thing in the first place (and the fact that most people operate in conflict-theory modes means it's probably optimal anyway). And that power flows through groups as well- Stallman might be creepy and Linus might be angry but without them the open source software movement would not exist as we know it- and the same thing applies to Keffals, for the same reasons. Sure, they could cancel him, but then the trans pipeline wouldn't be as effective and their total political power would thus go down- and have to compromise their definition of "what is good, and what is acceptable collateral damage".
And sure, we could go back and forth on how selfish that is (since at the end of the day, conflict theory means you know in your heart of hearts you're doing something wrong), but I don't think people generally think about it that hard.
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The issue isn't that some pervert men happen to be doing that, it's that this specific system is structured in a way that provides greater opportunities for such pervert men to exploit. The whole Catholic priest issue is a great example of this, actually, in how the whole structure of the way Catholic churches and communities were run gave greater opportunities for pervert men to do that while escaping justice. As such, people did and do argue that Catholic churches must be restructured to better prevent this.
In the case of the whole transwomen in women's prisons thing, I see a couple of good ways to argue in its favor. One is to say that some female prisoners being raped by male prisoners is a worthy cost to pay for transwoman prisoners having their gender identity validated by the criminal justice system; then we can discuss what the rates of these things would be and how much to weigh them against each other. Another is to say that we can place safeguards to prevent male-on-female rape in women's prisons while still getting the benefits of transwoman prisoners having their gender identity validated; then we can discuss specific protocols and effectiveness of enforcing these things. I think that's the tactic the Catholics have been using.
Sure, but Catholic churches don't really appear to have changed that much. My sister in laws kids still end up in one on one meetings with their priest and so on. And I would agree that there should be some kind of check on what prisoners go where, that is sensible.
As you say there are identity issues, and rape issues on each side. A trans woman going into a men's prison may be at risk and a trans woman going into a women's prison may put others at risk. Perfectly happy to stipulate that is entirely reasonable to take some kind of precautions there.
I'm just pointing out the argument I was told this would NEVER happen is just not a very good one. Pretty sure the Catholic church wasn't saying, and yes there is a chance your kids will be abused by one of our priests (which is the absolute truth) so please take that into account before you go to church. The rhetoric used is separate from what is actually reasonable. Holding either trans-people or the Catholic Church to a zero incidence framework is simply unreasonable.
If this is true, it needs to be reported to the parish's safety coordinator (assuming she's in the US.) The only circumstances where that should be happening is during confession, and now the standard for children is to have confession in a place that is visible from the outside (like through a window or in an unblocked corner of the church) or completely physically separated, like an old-style confession booth. Now, the sister-in-law might be bringing her children to a normal (adult) confession time, but if there are no specifically-labeled confession times for children, it is within her right to schedule a child-safety-compliant confession for her kids.
"If there is a need for a confidential discussion or training session with a minor, it should occur in a location that is in view of other persons, and the minor should have first and immediate access to the exit."
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