Jw Chief Targets Gays in Child Abuse Video

The Freethinker
July 7, 2015

http://freethinker.co.uk/2015/07/06/jw-chief-targets-gays-in-child-abuse-video/

Jehovah’s Witness leader Tony Morris III, above, who recently became an international laughing stock for blaming homosexuals for popularising skinny jeans, has again gone on the offensive against gays in a video that sets out to show how ‘proactive’ the cult has been in its efforts protect children from abuse.

“Tight Pants Tony” used the July 2015 episode of JW Broadcasting to address the issue of abuse, seemingly in response to the onslaught of negative publicity Watchtower has faced in recent years.

According to John Cedars, who runs the JWSurvey site, the Watchtower bigwig:

Unleashes an astonishing swipe at gay people in an apparent attempt to scapegoat homosexuals as being the main perpetrators of child abuse.

To prove his point that Jehovah’s Witnesses have always been ahead of the game in combating abuse, Morris refers to a 1982 edition of the cult’s Awake! rag, saying that an article it contained:

Warned about homosexual men who prey on and advocate the right to use boys for sex. Shame on them!

Said Cedars:

The ‘Chickens and Hawks’ article to which Morris alludes is a shameless piece of propaganda blaming homosexuals in general for child prostitution rings …

Morris’ exploitation of this isolated controversy to make a sweeping generalization about gay people represents only the latest example of what appears to be a pattern of homophobic bigotry above and beyond even the scathing condemnation of gays and lesbians found in Watchtower publications.

Cedars added:

Homophobic scapegoating aside, Morris’ comments are a fascinating example of the organization’s ‘head in the sand’ approach in the face of mounting media scrutiny of Watchtower’s child abuse track record.

Watchtower has been found legally responsible for its mishandling of child abuse in courts of law on several occasions in two different countries (the latest being a landmark High Court judgment in the UK) and in some cases being ordered to pay multimillion dollar damages for their negligence

These cases weren’t even alluded to in Morris’ 9-minute statement. Instead he heaps praise on the organization for taking “a decisive stand,” for being “pro-active,” and for making the safeguarding of children a “top priority.”

Cedars concluded:

For all his bluster, boasting and outrageous gay-bashing, the frustration and desperation of Tony Morris and his fellow Governing Body members is becoming painfully obvious.

Putting their hands over their ears and saying ‘la, la, la’ in the face of serious accusations of child safeguarding negligence may work for them personally, but this juvenile charade only adds to their culpability as court after court finds Watchtower negligent. And growing numbers of Jehovah’s Witnesses are seeing straight through it.