A
New York socialite who claims a priest turned him into
a sodomite is suing the Catholic Church for $5 million.
J. David Enright IV, 51, says Rev. Joseph Romano molested
him as a 7-year-old boy at summer camp, and as a result
he was unable to live as a suburban heterosexual.
"Romano
bent my life," Enright told the New
York Post. "I believe my life would be very
different now. I'd probably be married, living in Greenwich,
with four children in boarding school. I had a completely
straight life in business, socially on Park Avenue and
Fifth Avenue. Then there was this other world, which
was slinking around Greenwich Village gay bars, finding
mates."
This story of self-loathing is horribly wrong on so
many levels. But let's first cut Enright some slack,
for he is clearly a traumatized victim of child abuse
and internalized homophobia. He is spewing nonsense
as he tries to make sense of a childhood stripped away
by a priest who couldn't keep his clothes on.
However, his frivolous lawsuit must be addressed because
it contains damaging assertions that erroneously tie
homosexuality to child abuse. At the very heart of his
claim is the notion that homosexuals are simply misbehaving
heterosexuals who perform deviant acts because they
were screwed up as a result of poor parenting or child
abuse.
"Ex-gay" leader Richard Cohen best personifies this
theory. He claims to have had a flashback of childhood
abuse after banging a pillow repeatedly with a tennis
racquet to release pent up anger.
"All of a sudden, I saw male
genitals coming toward my mouth. I screamed. I felt
shocked. I felt horrified." The accused perpetrator
was a family friend, Uncle Dave, who allegedly molested
him between the ages of 5 and 6. "I cried and the
tears flowed for the next few years, as I worked through
memories of sexual abuseā|I learned that to be close
to a man I must give he?im my body."
The
truth is, there is no link between sexual abuse and
sexual orientation. The vast majority of child abuse
victims grow up to be heterosexual. The myth that abuse
leads to homosexuality is kept alive because anti-gay
political groups fear losing support if Americans believe
that gayness is natural and inborn.
For example, a November 2004 Lake, Snell, Perry and
Associates poll shows that 79 percent of people who
think homosexuality is inborn support civil unions or
marriage equality. Among those who believe sexual orientation
is a choice, only 22 percent support civil unions or
marriage rights.
If the right wing is to trick Americans into believing
homosexuality isn't natural, they must invent an unnatural
process by which people become gay. If they can assert
a brokenness caused by abuse, this gives them a pretext
to justify discrimination. It allows them to essentially
say, "homosexuals don't need rights, they need rehabilitation."
What
is hurtful about Enright's ludicrous lawsuit is that
it revives disgusting stereotypes of gay men as pedophiles
at the very time the Vatican is trying to pin their
abuse scandal on faithful gay priests. Unfortunately,
gay priests make an easy target because out of an estimated
10,000 minors molested, 80 per cent of the victims were
boys.
But are these perverted priests gay? A glance at the
available social science says that their orientation
probably is not homosexual. A 2000 study by Dr. Michael
R. Stevenson concluded, "A gay man is no more likely
than a straight man to perpetrate sexual activity on
children." A 1994 study by Dr. Carole Jenny found that
less than one-percent of the children in her study were
abused by a gay man or lesbian. In 1978, Drs. Nicholas
Groth and Jean Birnbaum found that none of the 175 molesters
in their study had an exclusively homosexual adult orientation.
So, why were boy victims overwhelmingly chosen instead
of girls? It is likely that priests picked boys instead
of ge?irls because they had greater access to young
men. The Groth and Birnbaum study shows that molesters
are not particularly picky about the sex of their victims:
"Those offenders who are
sexually attracted exclusively to children show a
slight preference for boys over girls, yet these same
individuals are uninterested in adult homosexual relationships.
In fact, they frequently express a strong sexual aversion
to adult males."
Molestation is clearly not a gay issue,
but a problem that has cost the Roman Catholic Church
nearly $2 billion for settlements and jury verdicts.
Additionally, from 1965 to 2000, the number of priests
in the U.S. dropped 30 percent, the number of nuns,
54 percent.
The celibacy and anti-gay rules are chasing out dedicated
servants, while attracting unhealthy people with dark
secrets who sometimes view priesthood as a 12-Step program
to overcome their issues. The Catholic Church did not
make J. David Enright IV gay. It did, however, turn
him into an unhealthy victim who is sadly unable to
accept his God-given sexual orientation. If the man
were any more messed up, he'd be a perfect candidate
for the priesthood.
