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Washington D.C., Nov 6, 2019 / 02:50 am (CNA).- On October 24, CBS published a 20-minute documentary following the lives of several different groups of people in polyamorous relationships, also called consensual non-monogamous relationships. In such relationships, three or more people in a group are sexually and emotionally involved with the other members of the group.

On the same day, ABC’s Nightline aired a segment on actor Nico Tortorella, whose open marriage with Bethany Meyers is documented in Tortorella’s new book, Space Between: Explorations of Love, Sex, and Fluidity.

The week prior, Congresswoman Katie Hill was reported to have been in a “throuple,” or a threesome relationship, with her estranged husband and a female staffer. She has subsequently announced her resignation from Congress.

To read the news, it would seem that consensual non-monogamy (CNM) is prolific. An oft-cited statistic in stories about CNM claims that one in five Americans has participated in such a relationship at some point in their lives.

“There is nothing with which modern relationship journalism seems so peculiarly infatuated as non-monogamy. Call it ‘polyamory,’ ‘swinging,’ or ‘consensual non-monogamy’ —if reporting is to be believed, it’s everywhere,” Charles Fain Lehman, a staff writer for Washington Free Beacon, wrote in a recent analysis for the Institute of Family Studies.

But really, Lehman argues, polyamory is not everywhere. Or it is at least not as common as most media coverage, and the ubiquitous “one in five” statistic, would make it seem.

“Where does that number come from? Essentially all of the articles point to the same source, a 2016 study in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy by a group of researchers at the Kinsey Institute. The abstract of the study does indeed confirm that ‘more than one in five (21.9% in Study 1; 21.2% in Study 2) participants report engaging in CNM at some point in their lifetime,’” Lehman said.

However, a closer look at the study reveals that the two surveys on which it is based rely only on information from single people – in the first study aged 21 and older, in the second study aged 18 and older. The first study surveyed people who were legally unmarried at the time, while the second study surveyed people who were either single or just casually dating.

Lehman said this means the conclusions of the survey can only apply to the single population and not to married people, even though all married people were at one time single.

“But, as decades of research have shown, married people vary systematically from their single peers. Among other factors, they are whiter, wealthier, and more religious,” Lehman noted.

“It is entirely plausible that a sample of entirely single people overrepresents a preference for polyamory—indeed, that they have not selected out of singlehood and into stable monogamy is one such indicator.”

Moreover, Lehman said he is not sure that the “one in five” statistic can even be accurately claimed for the single population, because of the phrasing of one of the questions in the survey and what may be a difference of definition.

“According to the study, ‘(a)ll participants were asked if they had ever had an open sexual relationship.’ What’s an open sexual relationship? ‘An agreed-upon, sexually non-exclusive relationship,’” Lehman noted.

“This language could, of course, describe ‘swinging’ or ‘opening up.’ But it could also quite plausibly describe casual dating, in which singles knowingly date, and sleep with, multiple people at once,” Lehman said.

“Such relationships are perhaps, strictly speaking, a-traditional, but they do not meet most people’s intuitive definitions of ‘polyamory,’ or even ‘open relationships’ (which connotes a degree of romantic, but not sexual, commitment—a nuance uncaptured by the question),” he added.

Even some CNM relationships would not fit this definition, if they are sexually exclusive relationships between three or more people, but are not open to others outside of the set group, Lehman wrote.

“There’s at least one other reason to be suspicious of Haupert et al.’s finding,” Lehman added.  “Their methodology notes that they deliberately oversampled ‘homosexual men and women.’ In fact, 15.3% of study 1 and 14.3% of study 2 respondents self-identified as LGB (lesbian, gay, or bisexual). That’s substantially higher than the population-wide prevalence of LGB people, which is generally pinned at 3 to 5%.”

“Previous research cited by the paper has shown, and Haupert et al. confirm, that identifying as lesbian, gay, or bisexual is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of reporting engaging in consensual non-monogamy,” he said.

“In other words, the study substantially oversampled the very subpopulation they then find is far more likely to engage in CNM.”

Lehman said it is not explained in the study whether the researchers adjusted for this bias in the results, though he said it seems unlikely. But the frequently-cited statistic that at least 20% of all Americans have dabbled in CNM seems to be a product of sample selection instead of reality, he noted.

“As always, the reality is probably more boring. Some single people engage in non-exclusive relationships; a smaller, unmeasured share probably engage in more formal ‘polyamorous’ or ‘consensually non-monogamous’ relationships, and that share has probably risen slightly,” he wrote.

In fact, he noted, the 2018 “i-Fidelity” survey by YouGov for The Wheatley Institution at BYU found that roughly 12% of Americans had ever engaged in an “open sexual relationship,” defined as “an agreed-upon, sexually non-exclusive relationship with more than one partner.”

Millennials were more likely to have engaged in such relationships, but still at a rate of less than 20%, he added.

“Polyamory may sound fun and exotic, but most of us don’t live such fun and exotic (and complicated) lives. By their 30s, most Americans (80%) are either married or single, with little evidence that ‘alternative’ structures are filling the gap for a significant share of adults. As Dr. Alan Hawkins recently put it, ‘the norm of marital monogamy is not crumbling’ after all.”

[…]

Baltimore, Md., Nov 6, 2019 / 12:03 am (CNA).- Catholic Relief Services, the official charitable arm of the U.S. bishops, is expressing strong opposition to the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord.

“With the planet warming at an alarming rate and the poorest of the poor left to withstand the consequences, there will undoubtedly be more global instability, forced migration and conflict,” said Bill O’Keefe, CRS’ executive vice president of Mission, Mobilization and Advocacy.

“It is not too late to take meaningful steps to care for creation and mitigate some of the worst impacts of climate change, which is why we hope our government reconsiders this misguided decision.”

On Monday, the United States gave its formal notification of its intent to exit the Paris Climate Accord.

The Dec. 2015 agreement, which 188 nations signed following the United Nations Climate Change Conference, came into force during Nov. 2016.

The coalition of nations agreed to attempt to limit the rise of global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

Pope Francis hailed the agreement as “historic” and said that it would require “a concerted and generous commitment” from members of the international community. Since then, officials of the Holy See have reiterated its view that climate change is a moral issue and has an effect on human dignity.

At a UN climate change summit in Poland in Dec. 2018, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin urged the implementation of the Paris Climate Accord by “easing the impact of climate change through responsible mitigation and adaptation measures.”

“The scientific data at our disposal clearly show the urgent need for swift action, within a context of ethics, equity and social justice,” Parolin said.

Some 60 dioceses in the United States have so far pledged to continue to support action to mitigate climate change, along with close to 200 religious communities, more than 100 parishes, and other Catholic groups in an agreement affirming the goals of the Paris Climate Accord.

President Donald Trump had announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the agreement after he took office in 2017, citing economic downsides to the plan’s implementation.

The United States is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China. Trump has previously said that the agreement put “no meaningful obligations on the world’s leading polluters” like China.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a formal notification to the United Nations of its intention to withdraw on the first possible day to do so, the BBC reports. UN rules meant it was not possible for the U.S. to start the withdrawal process until Nov. 4, 2019.

The withdrawal will take effect on Nov. 4, 2020, one day after the 2020 presidential election.

According to the BBC, the Paris Climate Accord included efforts to limit the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally, beginning at some point between 2050 and 2100, as well as a review of each country’s contribution to cutting emissions every five years.

Pompeo said the U.S. would instead follow “a realistic and pragmatic model,” using “all energy sources and technologies cleanly and efficiently.”

CRS said in a Nov. 4 statement that the Paris Climate Accord signifies international recognition that climate change is especially threatening “the most vulnerable who contributed the least to it,” and asserted that the agreement would “secure the cooperation, action and resources needed to address the problem.”

The agency also quoted Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si on the environment: “Faced with a climate emergency, we must take action accordingly, in order to avoid perpetrating a brutal act of injustice towards the poor and future generations.”

CRS noted that in Bangladesh, rising sea levels are encroaching on water tables and coastal homes. In Central America, CRS said in 2017, coffee farmers are losing their crops due to more frequent drought and because warmer temperatures help pests thrive.

According to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the years 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 are the four warmest years in recorded history, with 2019 projected to be in the top three.

The next UN climate summit will begin in Madrid in December.

[…]

Austin, Texas, Nov 5, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- The Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops have called on Gov. Greg Abbott to delay or cancel the execution of Rodney Reed, a convicted murderer who maintains his innocence. 

“The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops engages in advocacy efforts for every single Texas execution by urging the Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant reprieve as a matter of mercy based on our position that the death penalty is inadmissible in modern society,” said Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Conference for Catholic Bishops in a statement provided to CNA. 

But, Allmon said, Reed’s case is different.

“In the case of Mr. Reed, we are engaging as a matter of justice rather than mercy because there is substantial evidence that he may not be guilty of this crime,” Allmon said. 

“It would be a tremendous miscarriage of justice to allow the actual killer to go free while taking Mr. Reed’s life when there is untested DNA and an allegation of a confession by an alternate suspect that has not yet been investigated,” she said. 

The Texas bishops will continue to pray for justice and for the family of Stacey Stites, who Reed was convicted of murdering.

Reed was sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder of 20-year-old Stites in Bastrop County, Texas. After not showing up to work on the morning of April 23, 1996, Stites’ body was discovered in a wooded area that afternoon. She had been strangled by her own belt, and had unknown male DNA in and around her body. Officers believe that she had been sexually assaulted.

At the time of her murder, Stites was engaged to be married to a police officer named Jimmy Fennell. Fennell was considered to be the main suspect in her murder, but the DNA on her body did not match his and he was never charged. Years after Stites’ murder, Fennell was sentenced to 10 years in prison for charges related to sexual assault. 

Reed’s supporters allege that it was Fennell, not Reed, who killed Stites. DNA from the belt has not been tested and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will not approve of new DNA testing. 

A year after Stites’ murder, the DNA on her body was matched to that of Reed, who had a criminal history. Reed initially denied knowing Stites, but later changed his story and claimed they had a consensual sexual relationship and a secret affair. 

Reed is due to be executed on Nov. 20. 

Among those also calling for Gov. Abbott (R) to stop the execution are celebrities such as Kim Kardashian West, Rihanna, Meek Mill, and Gigi Hadid. A petition organized by The Action PAC on “FreeRodneyReed.com” requesting that Abbott stop the execution has been signed by over 1.1 million people. 

Those who think Reed is innocent cite many concerns regarding his trial and the potential of a cover-up by the town’s police department. Reed, who is black, was convicted by an all-white jury. A man imprisoned with Fennell wrote in a sworn affidavit that Fennell had confessed to murdering Stites due to being angry that she had been in a relationship with a black man. 

The Catholic Church is opposed to the use of capital punishment. 

In a livestream conversation held on Oct. 10, the World Day Against the death penalty, Archbishops Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City and Wilton Gregory of Washington were joined by Bishop Frank DeWane of Venice (FL) discussed Church teaching on capital punishment and said that they believed the death penalty was outdated. 

“What the Church wants us to understand is that taking a life, even the life of one who may have been guilty of a horrendous crime, is itself a continuation of violence,” said Gregory.  

“It makes us violent to do violence against another human being” regardless of the circumstances, Gregory said. 

Catholics, said DeWane, have a moral obligation to “say something” when life is not being respected, especially in instances that involve people who cannot speak for themselves.

[…]

Portland, Ore., Nov 5, 2019 / 05:21 pm (CNA).- Terry Bean, a leading investor, LGBT advocate and political fundraiser, has been arrested in Oregon following allegations that he and his lawyer unlawfully paid $200,000 to prevent court testimony from a man who accused Bean and his ex-boyfriend of sexually abusing him at the age of 15.

Terrence Patrick Bean, now age 71, posted bail Oct. 30 after Portland police arrested him on a charge of a felony computer crime, The Oregonian reports. Authorities allege he tried to pay off the alleged victim of sex abuse to prevent his testimony.

The charge relates to the revived criminal case against him alleging that in September 2013 he committed two felony counts of third-degree sodomy and a misdemeanor sexual abuse charge.

The previous trial had been postponed when the alleged victim disappeared, and later refused to testify when he reappeared. The charges had been dismissed without prejudice in 2015. Prosecutors revived the case earlier this year.

Bean is a co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign and of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. He has been a major fundraiser for Democratic Party candidates, including President Barack Obama’s campaign, the Oregonian reported.

Kiah Lawson, now 30, was Bean’s boyfriend at the time of the alleged crime, when both men were in Eugene, Ore. for an Oregon Ducks game. In September 2019 Lawson was found guilty on identical sex abuse charges and sentenced to two years in prison.

Bean’s lawyer, Derek Ashton, was also arrested on a felony computer crime for the alleged payoff and posted bail Oct. 30. The Oregon State Bar opened an ethics investigation against him in September.

Bean and Ashton are accused of arranging a $200,000 payment to the alleged victim, who was 15-years-old at the time of the alleged crime.

Steve Sherlag, Bean’s new criminal defense attorney, rejected the charges against his client.

“While we are shocked at the new charge and the state’s apparent shotgun approach, Mr. Bean unequivocally denies all of the state’s claims and their attendant innuendo,” Sherlag said, according to Williamette Week. “We look forward to exposing the full truth in open court and a full acquittal as justice requires.”

The Human Rights Campaign has many corporate partners in its LGBT activism. It has lobbied businesses to push for “LGBT equality” in legislation and corporate policy, to recruit self-identified LGBT employees and to give financial support for LGBT organizations through LGBT-targeted marketing or advertising and philanthropic support.

The organization has been critical of Catholic teaching and practice as well as leaders like Pope Francis and the U.S. bishops. It seeks to promote lay Catholic allies who oppose what the campaign characterizes as “the U.S. hierarchy’s anti-LGBTQ actions,” according to the campaign website’s Catholic initiatives section.

In 2014, the Human Rights Campaign responded to the charges against Bean. It said that Bean is one of 80 board members of the organization and he has no daily oversight or responsibility for its programs. He had taken a voluntary leave of absence from the board “until his issues are resolved,” a spokesman told CNN.

CNA sought comment from the Human Rights Campaign but did not receive a response by deadline.

In Ashton and Bean’s initial response to the charges, they proposed a “civil compromise,” which under Oregon law can sometimes resolve criminal cases through an approved payment to an alleged victim. However, Lane County Judge Charles Zennache refused to allow it, Williamette Week reports.

August court filings from Lane County Deputy District Attorney Erik Hasselman claim to have evidence of possible criminal conduct showing Ashton used $220,000 to pay the alleged victim not to show up or testify during Bean’s 2015 trial, The Oregonian reports.

Portland Police Bureau Detective Jeff Myers said Bean’s lawyer Ashton and the alleged victim’s lawyer worked to reach a civil settlement, 2019 court records say. ​They report a detailed plan to prevent investigators from finding the boy and that the alleged victim’s own lawyer allegedly helped him hide.

A defense motion over the summer from one of Bean’s lawyers indicated that Deputy Lane County District Attorney Erik Hasselman claims to have evidence that Bean, Ashton, the boy’s lawyer, and another attorney for a prosecutor’s witness “committed the crimes of bribery, witness tampering and ‘possibly’ money laundering.”

Bean attorney Kimberlee Volm, who filed the motion, told a judge that the statute of limitations had probably run out and would prevent charging Bean or Ashton with such charges.

KOIN 6 News said that the new arrests show that prosecutors believe they can proceed with some charges.

Bean has filed a $2 million civil lawsuit against Myers, the investigating officer; the prosecutor Erik Hasselman; and the alleged victim’s civil attorney Sean Riddell. The lawsuit claims they colluded into coaxing the alleged victim into falsely claiming Bean had sexually abused him, The Oregonian reported in September.

Riddell has filed a $6.15 million civil lawsuit against Bean on behalf of the alleged victim.

[…]

Washington D.C., Nov 5, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- A letter warning of a “climate emergency” signed by more than 11,000 scientists calls for a “gradual reduction” in the world’s population.  

The “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” was published in the journal BioScience on Tuesday, and was signed by 11,258 scientists from 153 countries.

In the statement, the signatories listed both economic growth and a global population increase as “among the most important drivers of increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion.” The report called for “bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies.”

The statement was published on Tuesday, after the U.S. formally declared that it was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, an international agreement set to go into effect in 2020 under which many UN member countries pledged to reduce their carbon emissions.

The Vatican has supported the Paris agreement, with Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin stating last year that “climate change is an issue increasingly more moral than technical.”

On Tuesday, the warning issued by the scientists noted a “rapid rise in greenhouse gas emissions” in recent decades along with other factors such as rises in air transport, economic GDP, and energy consumption and a decrease in the size of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

The global population is increasing by 80 million people per year, the statement claims, and is a key driver of climate change. “The world population must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity,” the scientists said.

Tuesday’s statement calls for “proven and effective policies that strengthen human rights while lowering fertility rates and lessening the impacts of population growth on GHG emissions and biodiversity loss.”

While the global population has continued to increase, fertility rates in many Western countries have already declined to replacement level or below.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the birth rate in the United States hit an all-time low in 2018 with the total fertility rate at 1.7—well below the replacement rate of 2.1. In South Korea in 2017, there were seven births per 1,000 people; Hungary saw its birth rate fall to 1.45 children per woman.

According to demographic prospects in the 2019 Revision of World Population Prospects, for the years 2015-2020, Western Europe was estimated at 1.68 live births per woman. Latin America and the Caribbean fell just under replacement level at 2.05 live births per woman. The African continent, by contrast, was estimated at 4.44 live births per woman.

Successful population control policies, the report noted, “make family-planning services available to all people, remove barriers to their access and achieve full gender equity, including primary and secondary education as a global norm for all, especially girls and young women.”

It cited another report by John Bongaarts and Brian C. O’Neill in Science Magazine that said efforts to slow population growth are being ignored as a legitimate solution to climate change.

Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, assistant professor of social research and economic thought at the Catholic University of America, told CNA in March that having children is a sign of optimism and that climate concerns should take a backseat to other factors.

“I think it takes a lot of courage to have a child, in any time,” Pakaluk said. “Having children in general seems to require a lot of courage and optimism.”  

Pakaluk, whose primary research area is in demographics and families, told CNA that having a child is an intimidating task, but one that is made easier with what she called “spiritual resources.”

Pakaluk also said rhetoric about overpopulation should be tempered by experience, and that while many believe vital resources are becoming more scarce, the opposite is often true.

“As the world population has grown, together with research, industry, and innovation, in fact, most of those scarce resources have actually become less scarce,” she said.

The professor noted that while the world’s population had typically ebbed and flowed before steadily rising over the last century, the “golden age” of sustained population growth is coming to an end.

Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on ecology, “Laudato Si,” paragraph 50 states that despite calls for population control as a solution to poverty, “demographic growth is fully compatible with an integral and shared development”.

“To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues,” the encyclical states of population growth as a false answer to climate change.

Developed countries may propose population control as a means by which to continue consuming resources at an unsustainable rate, while burdening developing countries with abortion, contraception, and sterilizations as well as effects of climate change, the encyclical said.

“It is an attempt to legitimize the present model of distribution, where a minority believes that it has the right to consume in a way which can never be universalized, since the planet could not even contain the waste products of such consumption,” the encyclical states.

Tuesday’s report was authored by William J. Ripple, professor of ecology at Oregon State University (OSU), and OSU associate research professor Christopher Wolf. It was signed by more than 11,000 scientists, ranging in disciplines and experience from biology professors to chemists, animal behaviorists, PhD candidates, research fellows, and heads of think tanks.

[…]

Oklahoma City, Okla., Nov 5, 2019 / 11:12 am (CNA).- The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday issued a temporary injunction against a law banning dilation-and-evacuation abortions. The injunction will stop the law from taking effect while a legal chal… […]

Washington D.C., Nov 5, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Senator Marco Rubio has called for “common good economics” ahead of a speech Tuesday on Catholic social teaching and the dignity of work, noting the need for a new economic vision to respond t… […]

Albany, N.Y., Nov 4, 2019 / 05:02 pm (CNA).- The Catholic Diocese of Albany is grieving the death of a local priest who was killed when his car was swept up in a flash flood on Halloween night.

“We are so saddened to learn of Father Thomas Conne… […]

Washington D.C., Nov 4, 2019 / 04:25 pm (CNA).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has canceled their invitation for Bishop Michael Bransfield, former head of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, to attend their upcoming annual fall meeting… […]

Washington D.C., Nov 4, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- The White House on Sunday finalized its quota of refugee admissions for the 2020 fiscal year, cutting the cap on U.S. refugee admissions to its lowest recorded level.

The White House said the fiscal year… […]