LCG's John Ogwyn Falsely Blames Catholic Pedophilia Crisis on Gays (2003)

Recently PCG's Joel Hilliker made an absurd and ridiculous article that tried to equate pedophilia with homosexuality. Unfortunately this is nothing new in the world of Armstrongism. This false equivalence was also insinuated to be so by the late John Ogwyn in a 2003 article written for LCG's recruitment magazine, Tomorrow's World.

The editors of this issue of LCG's recruitment magazine were Roderick C. Meredith, Richard Ames, William Bowmer, Gary Ehman, Rod McNair, Bruce Tyler, Gerald Weston and Douglas Winnail. If there are any problems with Ogwyn's article it must be asked why is it that none of them detected any problems with Ogwyn's article and let be published?

In PCG's 2013 booklet, Redefining Family, Joel Hilliker scare mongered about a 1987 article as though it were some sort of "master plan" to mainstream homosexuality. John Ogwyn does something similar to this by portraying a media organization, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, as some sort of master organization orchestrating the increasing acceptance of homosexuals in mainstream society.

To understand how homosexuality has moved into the mainstream, we must look at the role of the establishment media in the United States. Major news organizations are well represented in the leadership of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association; its recent officers have worked for prominent establishment news organizations including the New York Times, the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Newsday, Newsweek, The Arizona Republic, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time Inc. and USA Today. Truly, individuals whose goal is to advance the homosexual agenda are hard at work in the newsroom! (John Ogwyn, From Closet to Mainstream: The Homosexual Agenda, March-April 2003.)

Ogwyn has spent his entire life as a minister in authoritarian COG groups. Within both WCG and LCG centralized authority under one man was often emphasized. (GCG tried to portray themselves as "collegial" but this proved paper thin once Meredith decided he wanted one man rule in the way HWA enjoyed.)

So when Ogwyn sees how homosexuals has come to be widely accepted by mainstream society he cannot help but think there is some single organization behind all this. The possibility that this change came from below and not from above is harder for such a person to conceive of.

As is usually the case the COGs Ogwyn was quite opposed to homosexuals.

What is the homosexual agenda? It is nothing less than full acceptance of homosexual relationships on a par, both morally and legally, with heterosexual marriage. Not only is this agenda clear and specific; it is succeeding far beyond what could have been imagined a mere three or four decades ago.

Ogwyn cites one Dr. Judith Reisman to vilify the Kinsey Report. Should Ogwyn trust her?

[According to the Southern Poverty Law Center she has] a Ph.D. in communications and no formal training, education or credentials in law or psychology. ...

If you have heard of Reisman, it’s probably due to her unrelenting pseudoscientific campaign against Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute. In Reisman’s mind, Kinsey is the cause of all things wrong in the world, including pornography and sexual assault. Her latest work, Sexual Sabotage, which was published in 2010 by the far-right conspiracist WND Books, calls Kinsey a “traitor” to America because in Reisman’s mind, he and his researchers deliberately set out to defame the Greatest Generation and destroy the world. She has repeatedly claimed that Kinsey was a pedophile (there is no evidence to support her contentions), and went so far as to sue the Kinsey Institute for defamation in 1991 when they responded to her wild claims. The suit was dismissed with prejudice in 1994, a year after her conservative lawyer left the case. Even Kinsey’s death is a conspiracy, in her mind. Reisman claims that he died of “brutal, repetitive self-abuse” (i.e. masturbation) when in fact he died of heart problems and pneumonia. (Hatewatch, March 3, 2014.)

[Update December 9, 2015: For more on LCG's dependence on WorldNetDaily see LCG's Reliance on WorldNetDaily.]

Ogwyn never mentioned that lawsuit. Neither did Ogwyn mention that Kinsey "died of heart problems and pneumonia" but instead repeated the other assertion.

In short, according to Dr. Reisman, Kinsey was a fraud who "suffered an untimely death due, at least in part, to 'orchitis,' a lethal infection in his testicles that followed years of sadistic, orgiastic 'self-abuse.'"

It would appear that Ogwyn should have been more weary about this source he trusted.

Let us now return to Ogwyn's article.

Then Ogwyn insisted that the widespread sexual abuse committed by Roman Catholic priests were not pedophilia but homosexual.

In the last year, the Roman Catholic Church has received much negative publicity regarding what has been called a "pedophilia crisis." In fact, this misnomer tends to cover up the real nature of the crisis, which could more accurately be called a homosexual predator crisis. The overwhelming majority of young people who were abused (by some estimates, as many as 90 percent) were boys. A majority of the abused boys were adolescents. What has most commonly occurred is predatory homosexuality—not pedophilia, which by definition involves prepubescent children. ...

Yet the mainstream media have mostly avoided discussing the true nature of the so-called pedophilia scandal—and have avoided it for a reason. The real problem is the abuse carried out by predatory homosexuals in positions of authority, who abuse their positions in order to obtain perverted sexual favors from young people under their charge. Most mainstream news outlets are uncomfortable addressing this fact, and prefer not to call attention to the true nature of the homosexual culture.

What malicious nonsense. Ogwyn tried to exploit the terrible catastrophe regarding Catholic priests to vilify and demonize homosexuals. Acts by criminal individuals are used to demonize all homosexuals alike. This is classic guilt by association demagoguery. Ogwyn fails to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent.

What vile madness it is to try and blame people not associated with the catastrophe of what some Catholic priests did. The innocent are condemned for what criminal priests committed.

Ogwyn also seemed to think that homosexuality is contagious, that the young are recruited to become homosexual and that it is their own fault for being gay.

Because homosexuality is not normal (and people really are not born that way, in the way that some are born with blue eyes and others with brown eyes), the homosexual culture has always relied on recruitment in order to continue and to grow. Older homosexuals, holding out promises of acceptance and love, entice at-risk young people—often insecure in their own identity—into homosexual behavior. As our society cultivates a public environment in which homosexual behavior is divested of any moral stigma, this creates a climate in which the young are more easily seduced into a destructive lifestyle. Once enmeshed, most find it very difficult to extricate themselves, despite all of the pain and self-hatred that usually marks the very "un-gay" side of the homosexual experience.

What nonsense! Homosexuality is not contagious. If it was we would all be homosexual by now. You and your children can't "catch" it and suddenly never shake it off as Ogwyn seems to imagine here. It seems as though LCG members are told it is contagious.

LCG members can rest assured they or their children are in no danger of being tricked into liking homosexual behavior. It is not possible. No one can trick you or your children into thinking you or your children are gay. It is not possible.

Also how does Ogwyn know that is how homosexuality works? He seems to have trusted his anti-Kinsey Report source too much. How can readers be assured he is not making a similar error?

The COGs vilify homosexuals in order to distract their followers from the problems within LCG. LCG members are expected to pay three tithes to the LCG organization. In order to deflect the possibility that lay members might work together to advance their own interests in contradiction of the LCG ministers the LCG 1% vilify and scare monger about all kinds of people. Homosexuals are one such group targeted by LCG's 1% for vilification.

It is nonsense for Ogwyn to insist that people are somehow recruited into becoming gay.

Ogwyn was clearly wrong to not mention any evidence that his source about the Kinsey Report just might not be incorrect.

It is vile that Ogwyn tried to slur innocent people for what pedophiles who happened to be Catholic priests did. The guilty are responsible for what they did. It is vile to blame their wicked deeds on others.