The Catholic Right Star and the Porn Star -- Revised and Updated
Frederick Clarkson printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Thu Oct 01, 2015 at 11:35:42 PM EST
An international network of some of the world’s most vitriolic Religious Right activists and self-proclaimed orthodox religious leaders is holding its ninth global conference in Salt Lake City, Utah this month. The World Congress of Families' (WCF) conferences tend to attract thousands of participants and prominent religious and political leaders from all over the world.

If past conferences are any indication, many Americans may be shocked, but not entirely surprised, by the proceedings.

“From Russia to Nigeria to Australia,” as my colleague at Political Research Associates Cole Parke explained regarding the WCF IX agenda, “a seemingly innocuous definition of the ‘natural family’ is quietly being used as the basis of new laws to justify the criminalization of abortion and LGBTQ people.”

Indeed. It has unleashed a rolling thunder of horrific anti-LGBTQ political activism, legislation, and violence. Unsurprisingly, the theme of the Salt Lake City conclave will be religious liberty, and the groups involved in the planning of the event are among the best known organizations of the American Christian Right. They include the Alliance Defending Freedom, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Americans United for Life, National Organization for Marriage, Eagle Forum, and the Manhattan Declaration.

Among the featured speakers will be Austin Ruse, the conservative Catholic pro-family leader who last year suggested violence against college faculty and administrators in response to a College Republican's libertarian views on sex, pornography, and women's studies.

Below is a revised and updated version of my story on the sordid episode.
Miriam Weeks, a Duke University sophomore best known by her stage name Belle Knox was much in the news last year. She was even interviewed by Piers Morgan on CNN. She said that working as a porn star was a better way to cover college costs than working as a waitress. She dreams of becoming a civil and human rights lawyer and an advocate for the rights of sex workers.  Her story became fodder for celebrity gossip, opinion journalists -- and a few thoughtful commentators -- after she was outed by a fellow student.  Since the outing changed her life, Weeks was aggressively harassed online and in person and threatened with violence, and even death.

But facts often fall before the compelling evidence of faith in one's own knee-jerk opinions. Conservative columnist Charlotte Allen, for example, thinks Weeks, aka Belle Knox may not be "a troubled young woman" so much as an opportunist -- and that the first-term freshman's women's studies major may be to blame. Austin Ruse also blamed women's studies and told a national radio audience that "the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities" should "all be taken out and shot."

And that is where our story begins.

RightWingWatch got the audio.

That is the nonsense that they teach in women's studies at Duke University, this is where she learned this. The toxic stew of the modern university is gender studies, it's "Sex Week," they all have "Sex Week" and teaching people how to be sex-positive and overcome the patriarchy. My daughters go to a little private religious school and we pay an arm and a leg for it precisely to keep them away from all of this kind of nonsense. I do hope that they go to a Christian college or university and to keep them so far away from the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities, who should all be taken out and shot.

The push-back to Ruse came faster than a college women's studies program can turn a freshman into a porn star. And Ruse just as quickly closed his Twitter account -- and Knox' porn career continued to soar.

Ruse, a leading "pro-life" activist as president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) had no more evidence than Charlotte Allen that women's studies in any way pointed Weeks to the porn industry. But the story may serve as a Rorschach test for Ruse's own violent predilections. Or not.  But at least there is better evidence for my speculation than there is for Ruse's claim that Knox's first semester in a women's studies program at Duke led her to start a career in pornography.  Ruse apologized for his violent rhetoric. He said "I have dedicated my life and career to ending violence" -- but he had nothing to say about the widely reported threats of violence against Weeks.

There a