Monday, November 23, 2009

No link between clergy abuse and being gay

After writing a few hundreds posts on clergy sexual abuse, I came to the conclusion that the priests and pastors molesting children under color of religions authority authority are pedophiles. They come in both flavors, gay and straight, with neither orientation gives you a predilection to abuse. People push back all the time. I think because they want to tie this behavior to being gay. What I always say is that offenders have a problem that transcends their sexual orientation because that is what the research I’ve read indicates.

American Roman Catholic bishops commissioned a study to answer the question, are homosexual priests more likely to molest children than heterosexual priests? Their initial findings are in line with other research on the subject.

"What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse," John Jay's Margaret Smith said in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The question has been raised repeatedly within and outside the church because the overwhelming majority of known victims were boys.

The reason the overwhelming majority of victims are boys is the overwhelming number of children serving in the church are young boys. How are is that to figure out.  All you need do is look at the Baptist church understand this better. Boys and girls are abused with equal regularity. It’s a crime of opportunity. Priests have more opportunity to molest boys, so they do.

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