Catholic League President: 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' Is 'A Perversion Of An Expression Of Love'
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Fifty Shades of Grey, the film adaptation of the 2011 E.L. James hit novel, debuts in theaters this weekend and has already become the number pre-purchased R-rated film on Fandango.
Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League, told WPHT midday host Dom Giordano that he feels that the men and women that are following the movie and book's lead are "playing with fire" with some "very dangerous" practices that many women have been trying to eradicate for decades.
"What's going on with women? Here we are, 2015, 50 years after Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique, and she's talking about the 'comfortable concentration camp' called suburbia, women are being controlled by men, and they have to be free and compete in the workforce. Now, we have in the name of liberation, we have millions of women who are attracted -- at least with the book, which sells the idea that this is the way that it should be -- that the man is supposed to dominate the woman and of course, this time it is with violence."
Donahue has been trying to understand why these "white women in suburbia" are attracted to the domination by men that Fifty Shades of Grey pushes forth.
"I am curious as to why this phenomenon seems to be in there in the '70s as well as today, the appetite for domination, to have the man control you when we've been told over and over again by the elite media that men should not be dominating woman and the like. Yet, you can't seem to get it out of an awful lot of white women in suburbia who've been buying this book, that this is attractive to them."
The acts of domination are not the only things that concern him about the 50 Shades franchise.
"The commodification of sexuality, of treating people like an object, and this is not an expression of love, this is a perversion. It's a perversion of an expression of love, which has something to do with tenderness as opposed to violence. I'm also concerned about the extent of which there are an awful amount of distraught women in our society who are looking for a man in a rather sick sense to dominate them and may get involved in some rather dangerous kinds of things."
While he is confident that watching or reading it will not have any long lasting damages for a "normal" person, Donahue is more concerned about the segment of the population that "have a lot of problems" and see the lifestyle as a "path to some type of redemption."
"I think that it's a dangerous road that people can go down. All that I'm looking for is a little FYI, beware, take this with a grain of salt. Other people will take it too seriously, and they're going to wind up damaged, either psychologically or physically."
