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| Austin Ruse demonstrates how some Catholic leaders disguise homophobic lies. |
Austin Ruse is the leader of C-FAM (Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute), an anti-lgbt group which lobbies the United Nations. SPLC has it listed as a hate group. This is probably because of the myriad of times Ruse has denigrated the lgbt community or outright lied about us, such as when he called us "Satan's minions" or when he said "left-wing university professors taken out and shot."
That last controversy led Ruse to intensely dislike me because of the work I did to aggregate his words. He even sent me a message last year to let me know that he was still blocking me from twitter, which was a mystery because it came from out of nowhere and I really didn't give a #@!.
Still our paths unfortunately tend to cross, like today.
This morning, I read a column he published in late January in a religious (Catholic) magazine called Crisis. The column, Their Sexual Proclivities Are Killing Them, is something I haven't seen in a while - "good old fashioned" fear mongering about how homosexuality is supposedly a "dangerous lifestyle." And the more I read Ruse's article and where it comes from, the more I get disappointed at a certain religious belief:
It is clear from their relatively tiny numbers—only a few million in a total population of 318,000,000—that men who have sex with men (MSM)* are not “everywhere” as MSM insist they are. It is also clear from their sexual activities, particularly related to anal sex, that their sexual practices also set them apart from the normal population.
. . . Independent researcher Dale O’Leary published a hair-raising paper in The Linacre Quarterly two years ago called “The Syndemic of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) among MSM” that tells a plethora of uncomfortable truths about MSM.vNote her use of the term “syndemic.” This is beyond both an epidemic and a pandemic. A syndemic is two or more diseases in a population “in which there is some level of positive biological interaction that exacerbates the negative health effects of any or all of the diseases.”
Ruse admits that he is talking about an article which was published in 2014. But here is what he doesn't tell you. The Linacre Quarterly is not necessarily a credible magazine:
The Linacre Quarterly is the official journal of the Catholic Medical Association. Continuously published since 1934, The Linacre Quarterly is the oldest journal in existence dedicated to medical ethics. The Linacre Quarterly provides a forum in which faith and reason can be brought to bear on analyzing and resolving ethical issues in health care, with a particular focus on issues in clinical practice and research.
The Catholic Medical Association has a negative and very inaccurate stance on homosexuality as evidenced by a pamphlet it offers:
CMA’s pamphlet Homosexuality & Hope: Questions and Answers About Same-Sex Attraction provides clear, sensitive, and updated advice to persons and families who are dealing with same-sex attraction.CMA’s pamphlet Homosexuality & Hope: Questions and Answers About Same-Sex Attraction provides clear, sensitive, and updated advice to persons and families who are dealing with same-sex attraction. Homosexuality & Hope was first printed in 1999 in booklet form as a service to the medical profession, the Church, and society. Later, in 2003, a shorter pamphlet, focused on responding to the most frequently asked questions about same-sex attraction, was published. Later editions of the Homosexuality & Hope pamphlet, in 2008 and 2010, brought a new design and layout, updated citations reflecting new research on same-sex attraction, and a new question on recent attempts to apply the title “marriage” to same-sex relationships.
In other words, The Linacre Quarterly comes from an organization with negative views of homosexuality which are not necessarily rooted in science but faith. One has the question the credibility of any information about lgbts coming from this magazine. Indeed, the article Ruse is talking about does take a negative view of the lgbt community, generalizing about gay men,"bathhouses," "circuit parties," citing many statistics which are over several decades old, and even using the out-of-date term "gay bowel syndrome."
