Debunk the Top 5 Gay Myths

Father Rob Jack and Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse discuss the new ebook from the Ruth Institute: Debunk the Top 5 Gay Myths.

Transcript:

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Fr. Jack: With us now is Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, and she heads the Ruth Institute, which is an interfaith nonprofit organization helping defund the family and repair the damage of the sexual revolution. Her most recent book, which is really a primer on the whole topic, is called The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives. Dr. Morse, thanks for being with us today.

Dr. Morse: Oh, I’m glad to. Glad to be with you. It’s going to be fun.

Fr. Jack: Did your conference in Cleveland go well?

Dr. Morse: Oh, it was a blast. Oh, my gosh. You guys, you should have come out from Cincinnati. It was it was wonderful.

Fr. Jack: Well, some of us got to work for a living, doctor. You know, we got.

Dr. Morse: Oh, well, come on.

Fr. Jack: I’ve got masses on Sunday. You got to do that. You have Lenten talks, so.

Dr. Morse: Yes. Yes. But, you know, there were people from all over the place who came. You know, there were people from across northern Ohio, of course, as you would expect. And there were people from Michigan and New York and Pennsylvania and so on. You know, so it’s become, the Cleveland Right to Life conference has become one of the best regional pro-life conferences that I know of. It’s always inspiring.

Fr. Jack: What do you think? I mean, in going? One of the great things about going to things like this is you kind of get the mood of the people in different areas of the country. What did you sense the mood of the attendees were?

Dr. Morse: Well, you know, when people gather like that, when you’re in a room full of people who agree with you, there’s always a very positive vibe, you know, because people are, that’s part of the reason people come because they want to enjoy the feeling of camaraderie and, you know, we’re all in this together and we’re all on the same team and, you know, all of that.

And that’s one of the great things about this conference. But there was and is a, you know, serious reason for concern, which is this amendment or ballot initiative that the bad guys are about to put on the ballot in Ohio, in your state of Ohio. And they talked about that quite a bit. Of course, they’re all quite concerned about that, as I’m sure you guys are, too.

It’s basically the Michigan playbook all over again, that terrible proposition that won in Michigan in the last election with, you know, literally millions of dollars of outside money coming in from outside the state. So there was a lot of discussion about that, which was, of course, a very serious business. You know, what are we going to do? How are we going to do it?

There’s a coalition of people based there in Cleveland who, you know, who are all over it. And I’m sure I hope I certainly hope there are people in Cincinnati who are involved in that effort, too. I’m sure there must be.

Fr. Jack: Well, you know, Doctor, this is one of the things I’ve been noticing. And I put a couple articles on your Facebook page that I’ve seen, and I just saw one today where a pastor in Canada was thrown in jail for trying to stop one of these trans library readings with kids and stuff. And in the process of this, I’m thinking, you know, when it starts getting so bad that homosexuality is not on the top of the list. Worse things are getting there. That tells you something, doesn’t it?

Dr. Morse: Mm hmm. It does. It tells you something that. Look, this elevator hasn’t gone to the bottom floor yet, okay? I mean, people, I think, sometimes feel overwhelmed, and they want to hide under the bed and just hope this all goes away. It’s so crazy. It’s got to go. That’s not the case. I mean, this could get worse and it is getting worse.

And so it’s important that your listeners get involved and do whatever they can to be part of the solution. Because if we do nothing, it’s for sure it’s going to get worse. And the other thing about the, you know, a preacher like that, getting into that kind of trouble for what should be routine free speech, right.

That shows how desperate the people on the other side are to enforce their new world order that they have in mind. You know, they have a whole new vision of what the world should be like. You and I are in the way because we resist. You know, we don’t agree with what they’re doing. We know that what they’re doing is stupid and destructive.

Right. And so we’re in the way. And if we don’t resist, if you don’t resist today, what do you think’s going to happen tomorrow? You know, it’s not going to go away by itself, so I would urge everybody to get involved.

Fr. Jack: Especially what’s going to happen is, we’re going to be engaged in full on civil disobedience. If they keep pressing laws, then we’re going to have to stand up to the laws and we’re going to have to risk jail time because just because it’s legal does not mean it’s moral. And this is our big issue because it’s going to be faced in Ohio if that if that constitutional amendment passes.

It’s going to be faced in Kentucky with all this language ridiculousness that’s going on. It’s going to be faced all over the place. As you know, we read these articles about the rich and famous. They want children and so they the women, hyper ovulate and then create all these unborn children.

I sent you the one about Paris Hilton who has 20 unborn embryos, a boy because she wants a girl. And so what do we do?

Dr. Morse: Unbelievable.

Fr. Jack: Yeah. What do we do with these and of course, you know, it’s $30,000 a child because. Yeah. And they don’t care and it’s another 50 surrogate because they say, I want a baby, but I don’t want to carry one.

And I probably won’t care for one, but I want one. I mean, it’s just very disconcerting. And, of course, the whole issue of what we’re going to talk about today is so many lies that are being accepted as truth. And even if we try to get the truth out there, it’s being fought tooth and nail and all of a sudden, if we tell them the truth we’re racist or homophobic or trans phobic or, you know, we just put the word phobia in front of everything.

Dr. Morse: Right, right.

Fr. Jack: When the fact of the matter is, these people who are promoting this are, if anything else, reality phobic. They’re scared, you know.

Dr. Morse: Right. Right. Yeah, that’s right. I was trying to come up with the new word reality phobic. That’s. That’s correct. Truth phobic. You know, they’re lovers of lies. There must be a word for that.

Fr. Jack: Well, Father of lies, that’s Satan. There you go.

Dr. Morse: Right. And the problem is, of course, once you take one step down the path of falsehood, if you’re really committed to doing that, you have to prop it up all the time. You need a new lie to go along with the old lie, you know, to keep the whole structure standing. Whereas with the Catholic teaching, the Catholic teaching on marriage and family and human sexuality is based on certain undeniable eternal truths, namely, men and women are different, and men and women get together, make babies, you know, and that’s where babies come from.

And that is designed by God so that every person will come into being as a result of an act of love. Those are truths. You know, this is what God wants for us. That’s built into the structure of the universe. If we go along with that, we’re going to be a lot better off than if we’re fighting with it all the time, you know?

And, you know, if you believe sex makes babies, that belief will be reinforced on a daily basis in the world around you. You know, whereas if you think, oh, oh, you can have all the sex you want. As long as you have enough condoms, nothing bad will ever happen.

Fr. Jack: I just heard about something in one of the English tabloids, a thing called stealthing, which is I guess where men and women are having sexual relations and the men remove the contraception. And so the women don’t know that they’re having unprotected sex. And it’s called stealthing. And they haven’t found it to be a crime yet, but they’re trying to make this a crime.

Dr. Morse: Why do the men do this? What what’s their motivation? They want child support payments?

Fr. Jack: I don’t know what the reason is.

Dr. Morse: Generally that’s not the case.

Fr. Jack: But like I said, you can’t if you just you know, you go to things like, well the New York Post or those kind of things. I mean these are documented cases of now laws are going to be passed that if a man and a woman are going to engage in sexual relations and the woman believes he’s, you know, wearing protection and he’s not, he could be committing a crime, even though this was a consensual act. So you just read that and you’re thinking these people are out of their minds.

Dr. Morse: Yeah, it’s so it’s all upside down.

Fr. Jack: But let’s get to your e-book because you just developed a new e-book called Protecting Your Family from the Top Five Gay Myths. And if we can maybe cover a couple of them now or one of them now. And then after the break, we’ll get the rest of them.  

Dr. Morse: Well, you know what prompted us to write this book. What prompted me to write this book is there are a certain set of questions I end up answering again and again. You know, and the number one gay myth is that people are born gay. You know, that’s the number one big, big myth. Nobody is born gay.

There is no gay gene. The studies of identical twins show beyond any shadow of a doubt that there is no genetic hardwired determinism that makes a person gay. Okay, so there’s plenty of evidence against this claim, you know, and yet still we’re acting as if we believe it and it has some very serious consequences. So I start with a kind of a big overview of saying what they want to share, what they want to believe, what they want you to believe, what they want the courts to believe, what they want everybody to believe is that being gay is an innate, immutable trait, sort of like race, right? Because if they if they can prove that it’s true–

Fr. Jack: And if it comes from nature, then it has to be good.

Dr. Morse: Well, and it has to be. And you can’t expect them to change. And you can take all of the jurisprudence and legal structure to protect black people from discrimination. And you can just put all that into place to protect what is not at all anything but something that’s a behavior, a kind of behavior. And that’s really their goal. And that’s why it’s so important to understand the data around the subject.

Fr. Jack: Well, Dr. Morse can you stay with us over the break and we’ll come back and talk about the other myths?

Dr. Morse: Sounds good.

Fr. Jack: With us now is Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse of the Ruth Institute. She’s talking to us today about their new e-book called Protecting Your Family from the Top Gay Myths. And it’s available at their website at the Ruth Institute. It’s probably displayed in pop ups, to be honest, as we as you put it there. Doctor, thanks for staying with us.

Dr. Morse: Yeah, I’m afraid the pop ups are a little aggressive.

Fr. Jack: I hate pop ups. There’s nothing worse than that, you know?

Dr. Morse: I know, but. But it’s worth it. This one’s totally worth it. You’re going to be so glad you signed up for this thing.

Fr. Jack: Now, when we talk about the way it’s laid out, it’s like myth number one, sexual orientation can be easily and scientifically defined. And then there’s a story by Hudson Byblow. What is the story part? Is it his explanation of this?

Dr. Morse: What we try to do with each one of these myths, we try to find an individual who in some way exemplifies the story, you know, and Hudson Byblow’s story that he recounts, there’s a guy who wrote to him and said, you know, I’ve lived the gay lifestyle my whole life, but when I look back on it, all I really wanted was friendship.

And the point of that story is that what it means to be gay is not so cut and dry. It’s not so clear. You know, people think they’re gay or they have a certain set of feelings or somebody hits on them and they respond to it and think, Oh, I guess I’m gay. You know, that the idea that being gay is a thing that’s easily identified, that’s scientifically defined. That’s not true. Everybody who studies this area is perfectly well aware.

Fr. Jack: So there’s grooming involved with it.

Dr. Morse: There can be, you know, and that is I mean, that’s an important point, but that’s not the main point I’m making here. But the main point I’m trying to make here is that everybody who studies this area in a serious way knows that the definition of gay is ambiguous. Everybody knows that.

And yet people are going around saying, oh my gosh, I have this feeling I must be gay. Like, that’s the only possible meaning of that set of feelings. And so the story that Hudson tells is of a guy who is looking back on his life and going, I didn’t have to do that with these feelings. You know, I was looking for something different from what I found.

I was looking for male friendship. I was looking for male companionship. I wasted my life. I wasted my life looking for this stuff because in his mind, this all meant he was gay, you see? And so that the misunderstood standing, the scientific myth that’s floating around out there, has tangible, real world consequences for people in how they go about living their lives and how they look back on their lives like this was a mistake. That’s the point of the stories.

Fr. Jack: So number three, we talk about this as both for the homosexual and the whole transgender thing says no one can change his or her sexual orientation. And of course, the fourth, any attempt to do that is harmful.

Dr. Morse: Right. That’s right. The fact is, Father, people change their sexual orientation every day. Okay. And in fact, the term sexual orientation is probably a term we shouldn’t use, right? I mean, if we just think of it, what is it supposed to mean? What is it supposed to designate? It’s supposed to designate a pattern of feelings, thoughts, behaviors and self-understanding.

You know, that’s what it’s supposed to designate as a pattern. If you say sexual orientation like it’s a thing, it makes it sound like it’s a rigid thing, you know? And that’s precisely what we’re disputing here. Right. And so the fact is, people change their behaviors, thoughts, feelings. It happens all the time. Okay. I mean, I know people who, you know, lived at either gay or lesbian lifestyle for many, many years, you know, ten years or more.

And they now are married to an opposite sex partner. And they live with that opposite sex partner for ten or 15 or 20 years, you know. And it’s like, okay, were they not really gay in the first place and now this is their true self or are they still gay and they’re just hiding from themselves.

Fr. Jack: Or they’re nonbinary, I guess.

Dr. Morse: Yeah. They’re 15 years of marriage to an opposite sex partner and fatherhood to numerous children. That doesn’t count as proving you’re not gay. You know, the concept is so elastic, right, that it doesn’t serve any scientific purpose.

Fr. Jack: Well, is sexual relations an absolute defining point of humanity, or has the culture made it such?

Dr. Morse: That’s the point. That’s exactly the point that what the ideology is trying to do is to say that your pattern of sexual desires is defining you as a person. And this is why the church has always resisted this kind of language. You know, has always resisted the idea that there are homosexual persons.

Fr. Jack: As long as you stay out of Germany, Doctor, yeah.

Dr. Morse: Well, don’t even go, well, you know what? A message memo to German Synod. Okay, guys, you’re Science is bunk. I’m debunking your science. It is not true that people are born gay. We have modern science to tell us to change the Church’s teaching. Oh, stop. Just stop. You guys. You do not. You know, that is junk science. It is absolutely junk science.

Fr. Jack: Well, Dr. Morse, thank you so much for sharing with us this new e-book. We have, there’s a lot of other things we’ll talk about. We’ll have to save them for next week. So if people want to get that e-book or see the latest Dr. J interview, which is a great interview by Nicholas Eberstadt about the demographic winner, where can we send them?

Dr. Morse: Just go to Ruth Institute dot org and that pop up is going to be right in your face.

Fr. Jack: All right. Well, thank you so much for being with us today.

Dr. Morse: Good talking with you. Bye bye.

About the Ruth Institute

The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

Jennifer Roback Morse has a Ph.D. in economics and has taught at Yale and George Mason University. She is the author of The Sexual State and Love and Economics – It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.

To schedule an interview with Dr. Morse, contact media@ruthinstitute.org.

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