Mike Doughney

A lot of people may think that Maryland is some blue-state bastion of liberalism. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that. The state was founded as a refuge for Catholics and others who wouldn’t have been accepted in other semi-theocratic colonies. When something particularly stupid is happening here that involves the screams of moralizers, the political bloc or network that I justifiably refer to as a Catholic mafia is almost always involved.

So it goes with the recent flap over the planned showing of a triple-X movie at the University of Maryland, College Park. The first indication of peculiar Catholic involvement is the mention, in the third paragraph of the first Baltimore Sun article covering the completely-manufactured “controversy,” that the head of the Catholic Student Center in College Park has objected to the showing.

Catholic Mafioso (Andrew Harris, left) at work. (Baltimore Sun photo)

Now, if we lived in a normal place where a Catholic mafia didn’t have undue influence on government, the story would end there. But that’s not how things work here.

The next day, a followup story in the Sun featured a photo of one of the members of the Maryland Catholic Mafia in action. State Senator Andrew Harris, who is in fact a member of the Catholic fraternal group, the Knights of Columbus, took to the floor of the Senate to threaten the University of Maryland’s funding because certain Catholics objected to the planned screening of sexually explicit material. Those of you familiar with the K of C already know that political agitation, including anti-abortion activities such as the so-called “March for Life” is simply part of what the organization does; it raises money for these causes and support of them is part of everyday participation in the organization.

We can kind of connect the dots here and infer that Catholic clerical networking in Maryland exists, such that if a single random member of the pedophile-coddling Catholic priestly hierarchy and tradition is sufficiently bent out of shape about something relatively trivial but controversial that might somehow involve a state bureaucracy, there are people to call – particularly when the Senate is in session – that will predictably induce the Senate, or whatever governmental body they’re in, from stopping all work on something that might actually matter for a bit. You’d think state politicians would have their hands full with more important matters, like the rest of the state budget that often gets finished at the last minute of each session, and could keep their collective noses out of other people’s business, like what a bunch of students might be watching at the University of Maryland.

The irony of all this is that obviously Harris has zero familiarity with what kinds of films are shown at Maryland. He’s certainly never taken the sex-ed class that I took when I was a student there. After all, the class was about sex, so part of the course involved rather explicit instruction, textbooks, and films about… sex. And in my time, though I never actually saw one, explicit films were periodically shown by independent student groups on campus. “Tina and her cast of vegetables” was one memorable title I remember being advertised, along with the then-new porn classic, “The Opening of Misty Beethoven.”

Fortunately it appears that the show will go on sometime this week. And should that happen, Harris will likely again make a silly attempt to amend the state’s budget to cut off the University of Maryland. And he’ll probably not get very far. Still, the Senate’s limited time will again be wasted by Harris’ posturing on behalf of Maryland’s Catholic mafia.

It might take a few centuries, but as always, the religious nuts fleeing other theocracies might not quite be able to set up their own, but they can certainly set up things to make it clear that they have political power that they in no way deserve to have, power and influence far beyond their numbers and far beyond that of the average citizen.

University of Maryland student union to screen porn film - Baltimore Sun, April 1, 2009

Screening of porn film at University of Maryland canceled - Baltimore Sun, April 2, 2009

Students at College Park, UMBC plan screenings of XXX film - Baltimore Sun, April 3, 2009

Porn Flick Screening at U-Md. Still On, as Is Funding Threat - Washington Post, April 5, 2009

UPDATE: UM officials won’t stop porn screening, students say – Baltimore Sun, April 6, 2009

UPDATE: UM students watch half-hour of porn film - Baltimore Sun, April 6, 2009

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Andrew Harris biography, Maryland State Senate (showing him as a member of the Knights of Columbus)