The Priest Made Me Gay

by Wayne Besen

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 abuse…I learned that to be close to a man I must give him 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 girls 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 $1 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.

http://www.waynebesen.com/columns/2005/10/priest-made-me-gay.html