Our main objective with this survey was to see if our audience has a basic understanding of our mission. I’m pleased to see that, yes, you do! More
than 90% of you agree that the list of issues we tackle are indeed related.
The second question was like the first. We asked people to identify which of those issues seemed least compatible with the others. Almost 60% of the respondents
indicated that the issues were equally compatible with one another.
For the third question, we asked participates which issue was most important to them. It’s probably no surprise that abortion had the highest number of
responses. Third party reproduction/surrogacy had no responses.
This tells me that we should think carefully about how to logically link abortion to the other issues. My colleague Jennifer Johnson did this recently
in an interview with Jim Graves at National Catholic Register.
She drew an interesting parallel between abortion and no-fault divorce:
In both cases, the State sides with one person (the pregnant mother, the petitioner in a no-fault divorce action) to uphold or enforce the action that the person wants (the abortion, the no-fault divorce), while simultaneously providing no legal defense for the other person (the unborn child, the respondent in the divorce action). The individual who wants the action (of the abortion or to be divorced) must be “freed” from every restraint that he does not explicitly want.
The more we can do this, the more it will help people understand the destructive nature of the Sexual Revolution and how much power it has given the State.
For the fourth question, we asked people which issue they want to learn more about. The answers were more evenly distributed than any other answer in this
survey.
For the fifth question, we asked if the terms “sexual revolution” and “sexual liberation” were meaningful to people. The majority of respondents said yes
to this question.
Finally, we allowed people to leave optional remarks about our mission. About 45% of the survey participants left remarks, and they were almost 100% positive.
Here are just a few things people said about the mission of the Ruth Institute:
“I really appreciate your integrated approach to all of these issues…”
“You are awesome! Keep up your important mission and never give up. Your message needs to be heard…”
“… Everyone seems to have capitulated on no-fault divorce, and I’m really excited that your organization – any organization! – is even raising the
issue that no-fault divorce is not just something we should accept blindly.”
“I was going to say no to the last question, but I realized that after my parents’ divorce back in the 1970s, I got to live out the full implications of
this ‘revolt’ leading to bondage (not freedom) with all of the resultant pain & chaos in its wake.”
“I admire the work you do as a Catholic moral theologian.”
“You guys are amazing! I am 16 and I love reading your newsletters. You are so inspiring!”
There are many other like these. Thank you to everybody who participated!