No Link Between Homosexuality and Priest Sex Abuse, Study Says
During their annual meeting this week in Baltimore, the US Catholic Bishops reviewed a preliminary version of a study they commissioned on the reasons for clergy sexual abuse. The study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice researchers found that being gay had no correlation to the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the U.S. Catholic Church for decades.“This report confirms many other studies that demonstrate that sexual orientation has nothing to do with the pattern of child abuse by Catholic priests,” said Marianne Duddy-Burke, Executive Director of DignityUSA. “We hope that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will finally accept this finding, since it has been borne out through their own study.
"We urge the bishops to provide support and compensation to the victims/survivors of sexual abuse by clergy, identify perpetrators, press charges, and permanently remove them from contact with children. It is vital that the hierarchy atone for their own role in multiplying the abuse by moving known abusers from place to place.
We urge the entire Church to renew its commitment to preventing further abuse of children, and to obtaining justice for those who were abused. Finally, sexual orientation must no longer be used as a barrier to ordination for people called to official ministry."
DignityUSA is the nation’s oldest and foremost organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics, our families, friends, and allies. Founded in 1969, the organization has members and chapters throughout the United States.
No Link Between Homosexuality and Priest Sex Abuse, Study Says
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Beg pardon?
What part of male priests molesting boys is other than a homosexual act?
Maybe I'm missing something, but I've always understood boys and men to be of the same sex. And, I've always understood homosexuals to be persons who prefer partners of their own sex .
Male priests, who molest boys, are by definition homosexual.
- Don Earl
November 18, 2009 7:31PM
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What if they did it for money?
As the joke goes, what would you do for a billion dollars?
Seriously, though, this is an over simplified response to the OP. And not a useful definition of homosexuality .
The point is that it is not necessarily the gay men seeking refuge in the church that are molesting children . The priests involved in molestation are missing moral interlocks that are not involved in sexual orientation; whatever theirs may be.
In other words, homophobia will not protect your children from priests. Abstinence, they say, is the most safe method - so just don't take your kids to any churches and you will be better off.
- Submariner November 18, 2009 7:43PM
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Your definition is literal but not fundamentally correct
While it is true that a man who molests a boy is literally engaging in a "homosexual act" with the boy, in that both are of the same gender, this is not the best or most correct definition for what he is doing, any more than a man who molests a girl is normally described as engaging in a "heterosexual act," even though the man and the child are of opposite genders.
What these men are doing is engaging in pedophilia, which is neither homosexual nor heterosexual, per se. While some pedophiles prefer to molest boys and others prefer to molest girls, pedophiles are pedophiles, not homosexuals or heterosexuals.
Most pedophiles *identify* as "heterosexual," and the majority are actually men married to women . But their primary sexual attractions are neither to women nor to men, but to children .
And the point of the study is not whether pedophiles who molest girls can be correctly described as "heterosexual" (they cannot) nor whether pedophiles who molest boys can be correctly described as "homosexual" (they cannot), but whether in fact people with same-gender sexual orientation are more likely to molest children than are people with heterosexual orientations. The answer is, they are not. Statistics demonstrate that most pedophiles are straight-identifying white males, though, as I said, their primary sexual attraction is not to women, but to children (of whatever gender).
- Babaroni
November 19, 2009 3:17AM
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Could you be any MORE superficial?
Is "male prisoners, who molest weaker male prisoners", by definition homosexual? NO!
It's a matter of OPPORTUNITY. As a former priest myself, I assure you that priests have been denied ACCESS to women for centuries, for fear that they would molest members of the opposite sex . They didn't figure out until the recent scandals that if you didn't allow male priests to vent their sexual appetite with FEMALES that they might take advantage of the only victims they had access to, i.e. BOYS - which makes their ACTS "homosexual" but doesn't make them or their passions "homosexual". See my http://LiberalslikeChrist.Org/God& gays .html .
- Rayosun
November 19, 2009 7:57AM
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re
RE: "Is "male prisoners, who molest weaker male prisoners", by definition homosexual?"
Well, yeah. Duh!
Do you own a dictionary? Is English your second language?
By the goofy arguments I've seen, a homosexual who's into S&M isn't really gay because he's into some other weird stuff along with it.
What you're basically trying to argue is that not all homosexuals are pedophiles, which is probably a valid argument. But you can't argue that homosexuals, who are also pedophiles, aren't homosexuals. The plain meaning of words eliminates the possibility of the argument being other than foolish.
- Don Earl
November 19, 2009 5:10PM
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Right on Don Earl
I absolutely agree!!!!! it is the alter BOYS that are being molested..i dont care what they do with each other or other consenting adults but don't tell me it is not homosexuals who molest alther BOYS1!!!!!
- cbooh
November 21, 2009 4:12PM
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Um...
Priests molest girls, too. Lots of the victims of these pedophile priests are girls, not just boys. Pedophiles are pedophiles, not gay. Gay people are no more likely to be pedophiles than straight people.
- Babaroni
November 22, 2009 2:29AM
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I would be interested if it was an independent study
I can't really take one that they commissioned seriously.
- Doublecheck
November 19, 2009 1:07AM
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Why not?
There is excellent reason to take this study seriously. The Roman Catholic Church has been persecuting gays for several centuries, now, and, since the child-molesting-priests scandal broke, has been looking for ways to scapegoat those among its priesthood who appear or admit to being same-gender oriented, even when those men were faithfully celibate. The RCC has conducted a brutal purge of celibate gay priests instead of focusing their energies where they would be most helpful: getting rid of pedophiles from their ranks. They have slapped pedophiles on the hand and sent them off to greener pastures with more children to molest, while turning around and scapegoating celibate gay priests instead.
They have been looking for data which would support this witch-hunt, and when they failed to find any data which supported their stereotyped ideas of gays as being child-molesters, they commissioned their *own* study in hopes of drumming up evidence for their witch-hunt. Since their *own study* has come back in contradiction to their pet theory, it is, in fact, MORE believable, rather than less. This isn't how they wanted it to come out.
- Babaroni
November 19, 2009 3:22AM
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The issue is not homo/hetero, it is pedophilia.
And, it is becoming increasingly apparent that, over the course of a 1000 years, the Roman Catholic priesthood (not to mention other religious orders) has become the refuge of pedophiles.
It's simply ingrained in those closed societies, I'm afraid.
- jfh
November 19, 2009 10:31AM
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