By Peter Newman | 7 June 2023
Following Professor Roberto de Mattei’s exploration of attacks against the family in revolutionary history, and Dr Pat Fagan’s revealing insight into social science data on the benefits of marriage and religious worship for children and society, Dr Jennifer Roback Morse has made a further contribution to the Family and Life Academy’s catalogue of webinars unpacking the contemporary crisis. Dr Roback Morse joined John Smeaton on 2 June 2023 for a webinar entitled, Baked in from the beginning: paedophilia and the sexual revolution. She was careful to qualify “the somewhat shocking title”, right at the outset:
“You’re not going to hear me tell you that all the founders of the sexual revolution were themselves paedophiles. That’s not what we’re going to talk about. In fact, what I have to say is in its own way even more alarming… the way in which the sexual revolution presented itself, and the goals that it aspired to, required people to redefine what they meant by childhood… duties of parents to children, of society to children… So, in effect, without themselves being paedophiles, what they did is create a set of structures that weakened the protections for children and, at the same time, most likely attract people who actually are paedophiles. So my message is going to be a little more subtle than you may have thought but it is at the same time all the more disturbing.”
Also by way of introduction, Dr Roback Morse spoke of the mission of the Ruth Institute, of which she is founder and president, to equip people with the scientific resources to counter the false narrative of the sexual revolution and so to defend the family from the deconstruction pursued by its proponents. Among the Ruth Institute’s programmes is the Ask a survivor series, in which a clergy abuse survivor, Faith Hakesley answers questions from other abuse survivors searching for help and healing.
“Unlike some other people who talk about these issues, at the Ruth Institute, we are 100 percent committed to the Church’s teaching on marriage and family and human sexuality. We’re not the kind of people who are going to say that the solution to this is to get rid of celibacy or the solution to this is to lighten up about homosexuality. That’s not where we’re operating at all. Anyway, we have a pretty serious footprint in this area and I think that this gives us a credibility that other people don’t necessarily have in this area.”
The link between homosexual clergy and abuse cases in the Catholic Church was discussed with reference to the findings of the groundbreaking 2018 report by Fr Paul Sullins, Dr Roback Morse’s colleague at the Ruth Institute. The link between homosexuality and child abuse in society more broadly was admirably dealt with by Dr Roback Morse in the Q&A which concluded the webinar. The perspective in her presentation, however, remained that of the “survivors of the sexual revolution”. With reference to a pamphlet published by the Ruth Institute around 2013, Dr Roback Morse explained how working with “survivors” led her to take seriously the daunting subject at hand:
“Post abortive women, refugees from the hook-up culture, children of divorce, heartbroken career women… we had lots of ideas of who the victims were… there is nothing [in the pamphlet] about harassment and childhood sexual revolution… I thought, ‘That’s been around forever, it’s not fair to blame that on the sexual revolution.’
“Well, after a while, I came to the conclusion that… in fact the sexual revolution had and has a very important part to play in making childhood sexual abuse as common as it actually is. This was around 2018, when all these scandals were coming to light. I finally had to admit to myself that this was related to the sexual revolution, and the fact that I didn’t put it in that original pamphlet — basically, I just didn’t want to deal with it…
“But the fact is that the sexual revolution has created an ideology, and a whole set of social structures and ways of thinking, that provide cover for predators and also disarm victims. We’re all supposed to be ‘sex-positive’; we’re not supposed to be anxious or uptight about sex. Everybody’s entitled to sex in some way, so the sex revolution ideology and structures are actually gravely implicated in the whole sequence of this.”
Manifesting the Ruth Institute’s “serious commitment to understanding what is going on with sex abuse — generally and in the Catholic Church particularly”, Dr Roback Morse divided the main body of her talk into three parts, showing, firstly, that sexual abuse is pervasive among the global ruling class and is not unique to the Catholic Church; secondly, that the early proponents of the sexual revolution advocated for precocious sexual activity in children; and thirdly, that the ideology of the sexual revolutionaries required them to redefine the very concept of childhood.
Speaking firstly of the pervasiveness of paedophilia among the global elite, Dr Roback Morse focused strongly on the United Nations, whose official, Peter Newell, was co-author of the UN document, The rights of children, was himself charged for abusing children. “And he was saying that the international community must do everything possible to defend children’s right to have sex…” She also referred to a disturbing UN document, published this year, of which principle 16 on “consensual sexual conduct”, she reasoned with characteristic sobriety and balance, is “not legalising” but “softening the ground for legalising paedophilia”. She concluded that:
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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