An open letter from OutLaw to Judge Richard A. Posner

December 2, 2010

The Honorable Richard A. Posner
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Chicago Law School
1111 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60615

Dear Judge Posner,

We write this open letter as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and allied members of the University of Chicago Law School community to express our disappointment at your entry, "Contraception and Catholicism," on The Becker-Posner Blog. In suggesting a causal link between male homosexuality and sexual abuse of minors (or even conflating the two), your blog entry promulgates inaccurate and harmful stereotypes regarding gay and lesbian individuals.

Of course, we do not question your right--as a member of the judiciary, a member of the Law School community, or an individual using a university-facilitated forum--to express the opinion that you have.

In the past, however, your contributions as a public intellectual and member of our community have been recognized as displaying not only the best qualities of robust academic scholarship, but also respect for the equal dignity of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals. Your book, Sex and Reason, recognized the irrationality of sodomy laws years before many legislatures and courts in this country did the same.

Sadly, your recent blog entry falls short of these prior standards. As a factual matter, the existence of a link between homosexuality and sexual abuse has been entirely disproved by mainstream social scientists and soundly rejected by numerous courts. But the mistaken idea that such a link exists has been frequently and successfully invoked throughout our nation's history to stoke popular fears regarding gay and lesbian individuals and to justify public and private discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

We are saddened to see that, in reiterating this harmful stereotype, you have associated your distinguished name with this shameful history. Such a statement does not befit your reputation as one of the leading legal scholars of our time, and frustrates our ongoing work with the Law School administration to dispel inaccurate stereotypes regarding the hostility of the Law School (as the proud birthplace of law and economics) to LGBT students.

We encourage you to retract your statement at the earliest possibility.


University of Chicago OutLaw
LGBT and Allied Student Organization at the University of Chicago Law School
outlaw@law.uchicago.edu

Judge Posner's Response, Sent to Above the Law

Dear "Outlaw":

David Lat referred your letter to me; I hadn't seen it.

You misunderstand what I said and meant; maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. I said: "The problem of priests’ sexually molesting boys would be solved if priests were allowed to marry and if women could be priests, because then the priesthood would attract fewer homosexuals" (emphasis added). I didn't say that homosexuals molest children more than heterosexuals do, a subject on which I'm uninformed. I said that the problem of priests molesting boys would be solved (more precisely, it would be alleviated, since there would still be homosexual priests and some of them would be child molesters--of boys if they're homosexual) if priests could marry and women could be ordained. The priesthood attracts homosexuals, for obvious reasons, and homosexual child molesters are molesters of boys. Publicity concerning molestation of children by priests has focused on boys, which is why I suggested that an obvious response, though difficult for the Church because of its long-established doctrine, would be to allow priests to marry and women to be priests.

Women, by the way, are much less likely to molest children of either sex than men are. This means that if some (or many) priests were women, there would be less sexual molestation by priests of either boys or girls.

Very truly yours,

Richard A. Posner

Reply by Nick Tarasen, Vice-President of OutLaw

I am pleased to see that Judge Posner has disclaimed any support for even a correlation between homosexuality and sexual abuse.

Unfortunately, as OutLaw wrote in its letter, conflating homosexuality and same-sex sexual abuse is no more accurate, and is just as likely to provide support for anti-gay sentiment (as Judge Posner's original post certainly has), particularly given the ongoing scapegoating of gay men for the sexual abuse scandals within the Catholic church.

(Nor, ultimately, does Judge Posner's revised explanation adequately support any mention of homosexuality. At best, it suggests that reducing the number of homosexuals in the priesthood would simply eliminate the gender disparity among victims of sexual abuse, but that the total number of sexual abuse victims would stay the same. Even accepting this flawed premise as true, I see this as no alleviation of sexual abuse at all. Any substantial alleviation of sexual abuse would come from Posner's assertion that, as the gender ratio of the priesthood approaches that of the background population, so too would the rate of sexual abuse -- a fact which has little do to with homosexuality.)

© 2011 University of Chicago OutLaw