National Review - June 3, 2002
Gay Priests and Gay Marriage What the one issue has to do with the other By Stanley Kurtz
The sex-abuse scandal currently plaguing the Catholic priesthood has already grown to the point where it poses a serious threat to the power, prestige, and credibility of the American Catholic Church. The sky, so to speak, is falling. An institution whose fundamental strength and continuity (whatever its many problems) could once be taken for granted is experiencing a genuine crisis.
Yet, over and above its significance for the Catholic Church, the greatest lesson of this scandal has yet to be drawn. The uproar over priestly sex abuse - especially the calls to do away with both priestly celibacy and the Church's traditional teachings on sexuality - offers spectacular confirmation of nearly every warning ever issued by the opponents of gay marriage. The argument over gay marriage has always turned on the question of whether marriage will reduce gay promiscuity, or whether gays instead will subvert the monogamous ethos of traditional marriage. The priesthood scandal is a stunningly clear case in which the opening of an institution to large numbers of homosexuals, far from strengthening norms of sexual restraint, has instead resulted in the conscious and successful subversion of the norms themselves. Historically and theologically, moreover, priestly celibacy and marital fidelity have always been intimately related. Indeed, there is already good evidence to suggest that today's attack on priestly celibacy heralds tomorrow's assault on the ethos of marital monogamy.
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