He denies any misconduct and, while he may of course be lying to protect himself, all we've actually got is a an article in an online publication of which few of us have ever heard, based on what's said to incompetently anonymised data that's apparently publicly available for sale and a lot of innuendo. All we seem to know for sure is that it looks as if he had Grindr installed on his phone, and why I can see that's potentially embarrassing for a Catholic bishop, it's not on its own enough to convict him of much.
According to the Washington Post,
I have a whole load of questions which, if this evidence surfaced In an actual criminal investigation, the prosecution and defence would ask their own independent experts and then, after the experts had seen the evidence and compiled their reports, the two sides would try to decide which facts were common ground and agreed between the parties and which were in dispute, and why, before deciding how to proceed with the case.
There's none of that here -- the man's reputation and job are gone in an instant, simply on someone's word, whatever the real significance of the allegations.
The fact that Archbishop Gomez seems a particularly unpleasant character (his trying to weaponize one of the sacraments simply to embarrass President Biden and Biden's Archbishop is all sorts of wrong and creepy) who may well have got his just deserts doesn't mean he is not entitled to the presumption of innocence and due process like anyone else accused of wrongdoing.
I'm also extremely worried -- and if I were an American, I'd be profoundly scared -- that all this personal data is apparently just floating round for sale, supposedly anonymised but apparently easily deanonymized nevertheless.
It's scary easy to take two or three pieces of supposedly anonymised data and put them together to turn them into something that's anything but, which is why, in some parts of the world, there are things like the Data Protection Act and the Data Protection Directive, and people risk prosecution for allowing confidential data entrusted to them be abused in this way.
Doubtless this whole sorry episode has given the Republicans some ideas on opposition research that we'll see come to fruition over the next few years -- it can't only be Archbishop Gomez who now wishes he'd not simply clicked "approve" to all those requests on his cellphone to see and share his data, possibly wondering why apps seem to need to access all this information about him, and some of the people learning of his plight with some trepidation, despite their dislke of the man, will doubtless be Democratic candidates in important elections.
The Washington Post has a good article on the matter and some of the questions it raises, I think:
Case of high-ranking cleric allegedly tracked on Grindr app poses Rorschach test for Catholics.
www.vice.com
