Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is the founder of the Ruth Institute, an interfaith international coalition to defend the family and build a Civilization of Love.
She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Rochester and taught economics at Yale and George Mason Universities for 15 years. Dr. Morse and her husband are parents of an adopted child and a birth child, and were foster parents for San Diego County to eight foster children.
Dr. Morse founded the Ruth Institute in August 2008 at her dining room table. She expected to focus on the importance of motherhood, drawing on the themes of her first book, Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.
However, Proposition 8, the ballot initiative to amend the California Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, hit the scene at the same moment. Because of her extensive research on how children need both parents and a stable union between them, she did not feel she could sit on the sidelines of the Prop 8 debate. She became a campaign spokeswoman and redirected her studies into a much broader arena than she ever anticipated.
After the US Supreme Court overturned both Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, Dr. Morse began to address the whole range of marriage and family issues in a more comprehensive manner. The Ruth Institute began to systematically catalogue the harms of the Sexual Revolution and to give voice to its victims.
She has authored or co-authored six books and spoken around the globe. Her work has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Polish and Chuukese, the native language of the Micronesian Islands. Her latest book is The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Why the Church was Right All Along. (See below for a complete list of Dr. Morse’s books.)
Dr. Morse was named one of the “Catholic Stars of 2013” on a list that included Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI. That same year, the Southern Poverty Law Center added the Ruth Institute to their “hate map,” as an “Anti-LGBT” hate group.
In 2015, Dr. Morse and her husband relocated to Lake Charles, Louisiana, where the work of the Ruth Institute continues.
Today, the Ruth Institute equips its followers to defend traditional Christian sexual ethics by providing scientifically sound evidence, carefully reasoned arguments, and compelling personal testimonies.
Complete list of Dr. Morse’s books:
- Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village (2001)
- Smart Sex: Finding Lifelong Love in a Hookup World (2005)
- 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage (2013), coauthored with Betsy Kerekes
- The Sexual Revolution and Its Victims (2015)
- 101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person (2016), coauthored with Betsy Kerekes
- The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies are Destroying Lives and Why the Church was Right All Along (2018)
For more information, contact us at info@ruthinstitute.org. Many of Dr. Morse’s recent talks are also available on the Ruth Institute podcast page. See also her interviews on the Dr. J Show.
