Not clear on the concept.

April 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I almost missed the April 11 Los Angeles Times story that the son of the Mayor of Vernon was convicted of sex crimes and given an 8 year sentence.

This is John Malburg, 40 year-old son of Mayor Leonis Malburg. For those of you outside of Southern California, Vernon is a small, heavily industrial suburb of Los Angeles, with a mixed record of being run like a banana republic or fiefdom.

Malburg was convicted of molesting boys, including coercing at least one boy into pornographic videos. But here is where it gets scary and tragic: Malburg was Dean of Students at the now-closed Daniel Murphy High School in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles. The all-boys school, the original location of a Catholic seminary until it was moved to the San Fernando Valley, was shuttered by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2008.

The school connection tells us once again that here is another individual who is not clear on the Christian concept. You don’t molest kids. According to Deputy District Attorney Richard Taklender, Malburg had been a therapist for the boy when the abuse began, when he was under age 15.

Malburg apparently isn’t clear on the gay concept either. If you’re gay, there are plenty of opportunities to have an emotionally, sexually and relationally fulfilling gay life without messing with kids 15 and under. Or, for that matter, without resorting to coercion, unless your partner playfully begs “coerce me.”

But there is another issue here where the public itself is usually not clear on the concept, either. It is quite possible that the younger Malburg doesn’t consider himself gay and isn’t gay as most of us would understand that. It is possible he is simply a pedophile. And according to a lot of research, pedophiles can’t be easily classified as attracted to their own or the opposite gender. They are, as a group, attracted to children.

According to statistics I pulled from the Protect Our Kidz’ web site in 2001, here are some characteristics of child molesters:

• Can have adult sex partners, but children are primary sex object.
• Have lifestyles which give them easy access to children.
• Use threats to manipulate and control victims - or bribe them with gifts, love or promises to lure victims into their confidence before victimization takes place.
• May commit first offense when in teens.
• Continue behavior even after conviction and treatment.
• Are mostly males, but females also molest.
• May video or photograph sexual activity with children to exchange with other molesters and/or shame child into not telling anyone of the abuse.

Many of us are all too aware that gay men are accused of being pedophiles, although the majority of criminal incidents of pedophilia occurs within families.  Most often it is a father or uncle molesting a daughter.  Gay men who are interested in young boys are a small minority within a minority, and there is almost universal public repudiation by the gay community of male pedophiles.

The point is that some men who have a gay sexual orientation are pedophiles and can be molesters just as some men who are heterosexual are pedophiles and can be molesters. The problem for public safety and for families is not gay or straight; it’s child molesters. We must be clear on the concept. It would be ridiculous and unjust to go after gay people for being molesters because there is some overlap of those categories, just as it would be ridiculous and unjust to lock up or deny rights to all males because males are nine times more likely to engage in violent behavior than females.

We need to keep clarifying the concept, most of all, because we are an easy target for televangelists, radio preachers and politicians who in 2009 still take every opportunity to defame LGBT people and do everything they can to derail our civil rights. Calling all of us pedophiles is an easy way to stir up general hatred and homophobia.

That is beyond merely ignorant and misinformed. It’s even beyond “not clear on the concept”—because the real concept among the opportunists who prey, not on children, but on the public’s fear and disgust, is to manipulate public ignorance about us in order to perpetuate false information, stereotypes, hatred, anti-gay violence and denial of basic justice.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Catholic matters, Homophobia, Sex, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »