Cardinal Ruffles Gay Feathers

In speaking out against the child sex abuse scandal, the Catholic Church definitely hit a nerve this week. As more priests have been implicated in the molestation of young boys, the controversy has prompted a firestorm of criticism that now includes the international homosexual community. On Monday, Pope Benedict’s second-in-command, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone continued the Church’s apology for the incidents at a news conference and went on to say, “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia, but many others have shown… that there is a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia.” Gays and lesbian activists lashed out almost immediately, claiming that the Church is trying to shift blame, when in fact the Pope had already accepted responsibility for the incidents. Cardinal Bertone was merely pointing out another facet of the problem.

The outrage from homosexuals is partly self-defense. After all, the Church reported that “two-thirds of the incidents of abuse of adolescents by priests involved homosexual priests.” While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. About a third of all child sex abuse cases involve men molesting boys—and in one study, 86% of such men identified themselves as homosexual or bisexual. Try as they might, gays and lesbians can’t shrug off the link. This is a homosexual problem.

Tony Perkins heads the Family Research Council. This article is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.