Tuesday’s column: In-state tuition costs have gone crazy
By Dan
Today I’m doffing my columnist hat. In its place I’m donning another that says “Dad of two college students.” This graduation season seems like a good time to consider the extraordinary costs of in-state tuition at Virginia’s colleges and universities.
It’s getting harder and harder every year for a middle-class family to put kids through college. How the heck have things gotten so out of whack?
The Radford University Board of Visitors raised tuition prices last week by about 3.2 percent. Most of the other state universities have approved increases in that neighborhood. Virginia Tech has a tuition increase in the offing.
The bottom line is, it’s going to cost a Virginia high school graduate $4,682 to attend Radford in the fall semester, not counting room, board, books or other expenses. At Virginia Tech, tuition and fees are likely to be about $5,500 per semester.
Those prices are outrageously high.
When I entered the University of Maryland in 1978, in-state tuition and fees for one semester cost $400. At the University of Virginia that year, it was $402.
Back then, the minimum wage was $2.65 per hour. In other words, at either institution, a kid could go to school in exchange for roughly the equivalent of 151 hours of work.
READ THE REST OF THIS COLUMN HERE.
May 8, 2012 - 6:00 AM
Let me perhaps be the first first to say it, Dan — that wasn’t “metro.”
Yep,
It costs alot of money to keep those faculties of liberalism in tact and those liberal professors tenured. Reality extends its welcoming arms to you Dan.
Welcome to the laws of supply and demand. Prices will continue to rise for the cost of a college education as long as there is demand. Colleges are not going to cut their prices until economics requires them to do it.
Maybe you can get your buddy Court Rosen to get a meals tax passed statewide to fund it. Or maybe you should contact Senator Edwards about taxing newpapers for more college funding.
A timely article Dan, and an issue that I am dealing with right now as a college student. I’ve spent the last two years at Virginia Western and will be graduating this summer, but it has been really hard to decide where I wanted to transfer to in order to complete my B.S.. I looked at all the colleges in our area and was astounded at the price tags. I ended up accepting an offer from Mary Baldwin’s adult degree program. Unlike traditional universities, Mary Baldwin charges by the credit hour similar to community colleges. The current rate is $427 per credit hour, which comes to $5,124 for twelve credits (four traditional classes). If you add in fees and books, you’re looking at a figure around $6,000 a semester or $12,000 a year, which is comparable to Radford or Virginia Tech, but instead of having to drive up to Radford or Blacksburg every day I only have to travel the fourteen miles to the Roanoke Higher Education Center. It all works out in the end, but I have to admit that it is discouraging to know that I will graduate with $40,000 worth of debt, which is a bit more than my starting salary will be as a social studies teacher.
I think that our universities and colleges need our support, but until citizens are willing to either pay higher taxes or cut spending in other areas the problem will just keep getting worse.
Yep Bob H.
Libs love to blame the high cost of gasoline on evil big oil. But high tuition is never blamed on Big Education.
#2 Hmm, so are you saying that conservative professors would demand less money and would forgo tenure, Bob H?
Another interesting way to look at it would be to see how many are employed at stae university today versus 2000 and even earlier. I think you’ll see a lot of bloat.
“I think that our universities and colleges need our support, but until citizens are willing to either pay higher taxes or cut spending in other areas the problem will just keep getting worse.”
WHAT!?!
Actually, it is simply time that they do away with tenure at the university level. The whole point of that level of job security (aside from protecting the ability to be free-thinking) was to pay professors LESS in exchange for their living expenses being paid for, etc. Now that research brings in sizable grants and athletics is so profitable, it is time to revamp or do away with tenure and the ridiculous salaries that are being demanded by college professors, coaches (and administrators).
Yet another very unpopular opinion, I’m sure but I’m never afraid to voice them regardless.
A. Beasley,
Since you are planning to attend a private Virginia college you might want to visit the link below to get information about Virginia’s TAG grant program. You may have already been advised to do so. Also, I don’t know your family financial situation, but completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid might enable you to qualify for a PELL Grant as well. The TAG grant, I think, requires you to be a full time student. PELL Grant can be prorated for at least half time enrollment. Good luck.
http://www.schev.edu/forms/TAG%20App.pdf
I think that our universities and colleges need our support, but until citizens are willing to either pay higher taxes or cut spending in other areas the problem will just keep getting worse.
Of course. We would never consider cutting flab from the gigantic catch-all called “Education”.
Miriam,
The point of tenure was/is to protect the intellectual independence of professors. There has always been a ton of personal and ideological politics involved in teaching/professorship at the college level; if senior professors didn’t have tenure, it would be far too easy to corrupt the process of science and scholarship by simply threatening their jobs.
Professors must have the intellectual freedom explore and, well, profess, any scholarly position even if it challenges the status quo. Or to put it another way, they must never be afraid to voice very unpopular opinions. And tenure is what allows that.
Cuccinelli is one big fat argument for academic tenure. I’m pretty sure coaches don’t get it.
The irony here is that VT, being the largest school in the state and a favorite of 2 of our very conservative bloggers, now comes under attack from those very same bloggers as being bastions of liberalism and “Big Education”. And the correlation between “Big Oil” and state supported colleges is beyond me.
Here is a timely piece on the higher education boom and impending bust:
http://mises.org/daily/6020/The-Case-against-Student-Aid
Outtake:
“The unintended consequences of FFA [Federal Financial Aid] are numerous, indeed. Skyrocketing tuition, high default rates, and pathetic graduation rates — to name a few — are all byproducts of a system that incentivizes inefficiency, largess, and misguided decisions.”
…
“President Obama warned college officials in his recent State of the Union address that “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.” While it is mildly encouraging that he implicitly endorses the Bennett Hypothesis — former education William Bennett’s assertion that FFA enables colleges to “blithely” raise tuition — his proposed solutions, including increasing campus-based aid to $10 billion and a bubblegum $1 billion “Race to the Top” competition, only offer ever greater federal intervention. In essence, he wants to reward the meth addict for switching dealers.”
…
“Abolishing these [FFA] schemes in higher education would have positive effects for both institutions and students. The current culture of debt and inefficiency can be replaced by one that teaches students responsibility, hard work, and frugality. This should be embraced, not feared.”
#8 I agree with some of what you say, Miriam, but at many schools athletics really isn’t profitable. In fact, it costs a lot of money. Also, not all state schools are research institutes. In Virginia, only Tech and U.Va. really get BIG research dollars and those dollars go only to the folks doing the research. Liberal arts and business professors aren;t raking in research bucks, and even in the departments that do rake it in, many teachers aren’t really researchers. They teach.
I’m going to try this differently since my messages seem to be getting caught in the error syndrome.
Virginia is not alone in requiring students attending public colleges & universities to pay higher tuitions. It’s been happening since the late 1980s & early 1990s. It was then that states made a conscious decision, in my view, to require students & their families to pay an increased portion of the cost. There are a number of factors driving that decision. The legislators couched the reasons under the guise of “controlling state spending.” In fact they were shifting the costs to the consumer of the service. Interesting that they weren’t willing to increase taxes to cover those increased costs. The result was the same however, as a tax increase would have been.
Another factor involved a changed & expansion of federal support for student/parent loan programs. Those changes started in 1990 under Bush I and have continued since. In essence the feds guarantees the loan principle but permitted the loans to be given by private lenders. Wonder how that happened? The private lenders also were allowed to charge loan fees, in addition to interest, for providing the service. It was a very lucrative part of the private lenders loan portfolio. The number and amount of loans increased dramatically after the 1990 & 1993 changes.
Thanks for the info Ron. I have applied for the TAG this year and, thankfully, will be getting the full grant amount. As for the FASFA, I do fill that out every year, and since I’ve been at Virginia Western the PELL grants have fully paid for my classes and books. However, these two grants combined will not cover all of my school costs so I will have to use loan money to make up the difference, and for living costs.
89Hoo, that’s only going to work if parents are willing to let their kids be on the forefront of those refusing to go to the schools of their choice if they can’t afford to stroke a check. I don’t see it happening.
Tuition at my college has increased dramatically since the mid 1990s. In the mid 1990s 3 of 4 staff members at the college were members of the sponsoring order that founded the college. Today, out of 100 full time employees I have 2 members of the sponsoring order on staff.
Those 75% in the mid 1990s took vows of poverty and we didn’t have to pay them. So my college went from not paying 3/4s of its staff to having to pay and provide benefits to 98% of its staff.
In addition to that little problem, my utility costs, equipment costs and most other operational costs have also increased significantly.
I get no direct state or federal aid in the operation of my college. Adding all these factors up and you can see directly why my need to charge higher tuition and fees occured.
Dan, I agree. Schools charging that much is absolutely outrageous. Add to that, kids aren’t getting their money’s worth. How many kids will graduate this year and come out desperately searching for work unable to find it?
If a student spends $50+k on a degree in Philosophy and cannot immediately get a job in that field upon graduation…who should be held responsible?
1) The school
2) The Student
3) The State
#5,
Conservative professors, though their number be low, would obviously be in much higher demand and therefore commanding larger salaries. But they would be much more economical to employ because their effetiveness in teaching would more than offset the higher cost of the salary.
You want to save money? You got to go to where it is being spent.
The fact is that college is not the 13th grade. College has never been something EVERONE could go to. That has not changed.
Ron, you’re exactly right; many states have been doing this. In the larger sense it’s a function of the “Reagan Revolution.” In that, a lot of federal aid to the states was replaced with block grants, which had the effect of diminishing federal aid over time. This also roughly coincides with the spread of state lotteries (which is a nontax way to extract money from the citizenry), increased state taxes (mostly in the form of sales taxes) and reduction in state aid to localities.
The last two big federal programs conservatives can eviscerate (aside from defense, which few want to tough because too many of them make money off it) is Social Security and Medicare. And Paul Ryan will do everything in his power to get rid of those.
My wife has a friend who just had a baby (we had our first 19 months ago). Her friend does college placement. My wife was visiting the baby for the first time, and her friend said that by the time our kids are ready for college, we should expect it to cost $80k/yr.
And that’s in-state. Just reading that makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
The irony here is that VT, being the largest school in the state and a favorite of 2 of our very conservative bloggers, now comes under attack from those very same bloggers as being bastions of liberalism and “Big Education”. And the correlation between “Big Oil” and state supported colleges is beyond me.
VT is really a tale of two schools. On the one hand, it’s modestly-paid engineering professors turn out some of the finest engineers in the country. Something to truly be proud of.
On the flip side, there’s the leftwing influence which puts out unproductive students with worthless degrees. This is personified by Nikki Giovanni (and her $150K salary) putting forth a curriculum of hatred where troubled students like Cho gravitate. A true embarrassment for VT.
Those 75% in the mid 1990s took vows of poverty and we didn’t have to pay them.
Thank God for the generosity of Catholic priests and sister who take vows of poverty. You don’t hear enough about that in the MSM for some reason.
And how much of Nikki Giovanni’s salary is paid for by taxpayers or students? Oh . . . you mean it’s zero? So why are your knickers in a knot over that?
#24 Broken record. Snicker, snicker.
Thank God for the generosity of Catholic priests and sister who take vows of poverty. You don’t hear enough about that in the MSM for some reason.
Comment by Suzie — May 8, 2012 @ 1:12 pm
Oh but we are hearing a lot about those women religious who took vows of poverty and served the church so faithfully for years.
http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/vatican-orders-lcwr-be-closer-teachings-and-discipline-church
@25 “Modestly paid engineering professors” my ass. Have you actually looked at what they make? Clearly not. Go look and then try that again.
At last count VT had 157 Endowed professorships for which the state pays nothing to support.
I suspect Ron’s school gave its students a good deal more of the Catholic viewpoint back in the 90s when the order was running it than it does now. That’s truly a shame.
Parents and students are not stupid, as long as the value of the education exceeds the cost of tuition, they will continue to buy. Here you have conservatives arguing against free market.
The average salary for my engineering professors there is roughly 120k.
I know that when I look at the Vatican, the first thing I think is “poverty”.
Its funny… I can count at least 57 faculty members being paid more than Nikki Giovanni that have the word “engineering” in their title… And 23 of them are making north of $200,000.
(If I wasn’t typing this on my phone, I’d list names, salaries and departments)
I mean, the median income for a family in Blacksburg is just a bit north of $50,000, so of course the 57 engineering professors/deans/etc making between 3 and 6 times what the median family makes is ‘modest’…
I expect that we should have to sympathize with the cut backs they have had to make during this recession too.
Well Dan I feel your pain. I have two family members in school and a third enrolling in June. What is the solution to lower costs? probably something like the model Western Governors University has. Dan you could always reprise your role as the “kamikaze bike delivery guy” so you’d have a second job to help pay for college for your kids.
“Thank God for the generosity of Catholic priests and sister who take vows of poverty. You don’t hear enough about that in the MSM for some reason.”
Ron, who in the past has been pilloried as a fake conservative (and worse) gets the credit for the first mention of the vows of poverty on this board. Fancy that!
Maloof,
I may yet get a second job. But the barn door closed on bike messengers long ago. There are still some, in major cities. But news film, news releases, court & regulatory filings made up the lions share of my business when I did it (especially carrying AP and UPI news photogs’ film — those ultra rush runs always paid double and were the shortest runs in town).
A huge part of the biz is gone now, because of the fax machine, email, pdfs and digital photography.
Wish I could have that vow of poverty again. Outdoor swimming pool, walk in bar and all the food you can eat. We use to call it a glorified bachelors life.
Interesting article Dan, but you miss some key points. During the last 11-12 years, the state of Virginia has invested over $4 Billion in buildings on colleges campuses. Didn’t hear the college presidents complaining about that. Look around the country, there is no correlation between state support and tuition because no matter how much the state gives college leaders still have their “asperational” goals that exceed the state funding formulas.
Enjoy: http://tinyurl.com/7ptl9ml
**
Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School
SNIP
[In light of some of today's comments particularly check out #5]
**
The average salary for my engineering professors there is roughly 120k.
And Giovanna makes more than the average enginerring professor. And for what? That’s just wrong.
I know that when I look at the Vatican, the first thing I think is “poverty”.
That’s as dumb as saying “The president is rich. Look at that fancy house and yard he has in DC”. And that jet!”
I hope to get a lot of time off from purgatory for the idiocy I have to put up with on here.
It’s a real shame when Catholic institutions forget the reason they exist – to promote Catholic Christian values to its students. In the old days, they understood a secular education was meaningless without a strong value system along with it.
Now so many Catholic schools are losing their way because administrators aren’t practicing Catholics and don’t transfer those values of virtue to the students. Good or bad, an institution is often a shadow of its leader. So when the leader isn’t pro-life for example, or has never fasted or said the rosary or taken ashes or gone to confession, or hasn’t had any number of experiences, the students lose. And those little things seem seemingly insignficant to the non-Catholic leadership matter an awful lot to prospective parents.
I have a very Suzie-like idea for higher education cost in America…
Students only pay tuition based on what their professors make.
So the engineering students at Virginia Tech pay for professors who have a median income of just over $100k, and English students at Virginia Tech pay for professors who have a median income of about $50k.
So in other words… engineering students will pay roughly twice as much in tuition than English students.
And if you get into all the equipment used in the advanced engineering labs at Virginia Tech vs. the literature used in English classes at Tech, it will be more than twice the tuition.
I mean, why should English students subsidize engineering students education?
“Suzie says:
I hope to get a lot of time off from purgatory for the idiocy I have to put up with on here.”
You’ve made that little joke before. It’s pretty disrespectful of your own religion.
As for ‘having to put up with’ anything on this blog, you don’t. You’re free to not read the comments or post here, but you lack the self-discipline to refrain from doing so.
“Suzie says:
It’s a real shame when Catholic institutions forget the reason they exist – to promote Catholic Christian values to its students.”
It’s a real shame when someone who calls themself a Catholic sings the praises of a man such as Rush Limpballs, who embodies the exact opposite of Catholic teachings, and then wants to preach about how a Catholic school should be run. It’s a real shame when that same hypocrite compares Rush Limpballs to Jesus Christ and calls Limpballs ‘arguably the greatest man in the world’, thus placing him above the Pope, and then thinks her opinion of how to run a Catholic school carries any weight.
“I hope to get a lot of time off from purgatory for the idiocy I have to put up with on here.”
The rest of us are earning some “time served” credit for putting up with your idiocy here.
“I hope to get a lot of time off from purgatory for the idiocy I have to put up with on here.”
You’re free to leave at any time.
“Higher Education Theatre of the Absurd”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/higher_education_theatre_of_the_absurd.html
“Higher education today is a nightmare. There are a trillion dollars in potentially toxic student debt. We see people with PhDs on food stamps, a 400% rise in tuition over 20 years, and only 49% of college grads finding jobs within a year.”
Good read
#45 most ill-informed posted, “Now so many Catholic schools are losing their way because administrators aren’t practicing Catholics and don’t transfer those values of virtue to the students.”
As always, the cafeteria-faux-Catholic spouts off on a subject without any fact based knowledge…
Having attended Catholic school, as did most of my relatives including my children, the make-believe Catholic opining on the what and why of Catholicism is nauseating…
The reality of Catholic education and its decline has to do more with:
the middle-class exodus from cities;
the growing number of low-income students unable to afford tuition;
rising tuition rates;
declining church attendance;
increasing costs due to aging buildings and expensive staff.
When I attended Catholic school, [stone age], as a member of my Parish, my parents paid no tuition. By the time high school rolled around, and the Parish school only went through 8th grade, tuition was charged to students who had to go out-of-parish – a rather insignificant yearly tuition.
When we sent our 2 children to Catholic school, the yearly cost per student, was $5,000. When I last checked, it had risen to $9,500+ per student per year for elementary education; more for high school. Affordability has become a driving factor in the diminishing number of students enrolled in Catholic schools.
The growing suburban population without access to Catholic schools, the loss of Catholic populations in large cities, the rising tuition costs, and abandonment of the practice of the faith by large numbers of the nation’s Catholics – especially women – are the significant challenges for the future of Catholic schools.
Certainly not the nonsense indicated by most-ill informed. Please stop making believe you know Catholic teachings, or anything else about Catholicism as you do not represent their teachings or ideals. From your posts I know you could never have attended Catholic school, nor do I believe you are a practicing Catholic with the level of hate you spew. And if I were you, I would not worry about purgatory – you are destined for a much warmer place.
http://www.ncea.org/news/annualdatareport.asp#enrollment
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/795/the_state_of_catholic_schools_in_the_us.aspx
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-04-09-catholic-schools_N.htm
LC,
The default rate on student loan debt is currently at 8%. The default rate on student loan debt is typically between 4 & 5%. It has risen in the last three years for the same reasons the mortgage loan default rate has gone over 11%.
That means that 92% of student loan borrowers are continuing to pay off the debt they owe on schedule.
As always, the cafeteria-faux-Catholic spouts off on a subject without any fact based knowledge…
The person saying this, mind you, is someone who dropped out of the church years ago, probably because she couldn’t cut the rules.
I think she’s trying make the claim I’m a “cafeteria” Catholic because I support the death penalty for those rare individuals like OBL who pose a significant threat to others simply by being alive. Such idiocy is too lame to even respond to .
But actually Roanoke Catholic has had such a crisis in the past 10-15 years. They lost their way for a time. They were so concerned with not offending their non-Catholic students, they watered down their Catholic curriculum. Athletics became a big priority. Recruiting 6’8″ kids from Latvia and so forth. Meanwhile tuition jumped. RC was trying to be another North Cross.
With the new leadership, I understand they’re trying to get back to their roots, and that is a great thing.
——–
From your posts I know you could never have attended Catholic school
Oh yes indeed I did. I started at at time when the school was run exclusively by strict tough nuns. I know all the stories and lived through a few of them. Some of them weren’t very PC, but they have me the firm foundation I needed to accomplish what I have.
Sorry if your experience wasn’t so good, HIllary. Not everybody can handle the difficulty of it. Sounds like you’re one of them.
51. Lake Claytor – and what would you expect coming out of the second greatest economic crisis this Country has ever seen. The State and local governments have been laying off staff all of last year, private industry is just starting to hire, technology has taken many jobs, and baby boomers are just now beginning to retire. The construction and real estate industry (about 2% of the workforce) remains unemployed until the construction industry start back.
Education is not the problem, it is the solution in providing workers for a technological economy. With the Construction industry dead until housing returns, jobs for the workers without an education simply are not there. As baby boomers retire (you see this in the numbers no longer seeking jobs), the States no longer cutting jobs, and hopefully Congress putting the construction industry to work on infrastructure, jobs will be returning for students with an education.
Too much of the sky is falling is being thrown about by the GOP and Tea party when the facts are simply things are getting better.
Dan, maybe you should tune into John Stossel Sunday night…
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2012/05/04/stupid-america-sunday-9pm-et-fnc
Ron, who in the past has been pilloried as a fake conservative (and worse) gets the credit for the first mention of the vows of poverty on this board. Fancy that!
Actually I mentioned it three days ago in the atheist discussion. You have to get up pret-ty danged early to top Suziegirl.
Dave Hicks from 5/8
Again, I did follow your post, I think that again, in some ways, it is telling you different things that it is telling me…but anyway…paying attention to number 5 as you suggested.
She says that the ONLY path to success is COLLEGE. How does that take into account that there are MANY successful people who never went to college.
Examples: These famous, successful people who never went to college, some who dropped out and some who never even finished high school. You can find a list of 100 of them here:
http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2010/06/07/100-famously-successful-people-who-skipped-college/
“The person saying this, mind you, is someone who dropped out of the church years ago, probably because she couldn’t cut the rules.”
Spoken by a person who apparently has NO CONCEPT WHATSOEVER about the institutional coverup the church has systematically organized, concerning child sex abuse by a sizable percentage of priests, which has occurred over generations. How a good Catholic could not be revolted over this is beyond me.
Aaron, just an FYI, Engineering Students do pay more in tuition than English Students. Engineering majors pay $30 more per credit hour. Architecture students have a fee per semester.
Also, as an Electrical Engineer, I had to purchase a $200 Electrical Bundle for 2 labs, and a microprocessor board for one class ($100). Oh and the laptops were NOT optional… so that was almost $3000 over the course of the time I was there… hmmm what else… oh my senior project, that was about $200 bucks out of my pocket to build a solar powered water purifier (that now resides in Haiti.)
Engineers… we pay plenty. Of course, we are usually the ones with multiple job offers upon graduation.
Oh yeah! The Not Optional Software Fee for Engineers. thats $141, even if you already have all the software on your own.
concerning child sex abuse by a sizable percentage of priests
Nope. It was a tiny minority of gay priests who violated their vows.
#54 most ill-informed posts it once attended Catholic School. What a tragic example of a failed Catholic doctrine if it is the result. Since I don’t believe a word of its posts, I especially do not believe it is a product of Catholic School nor Catholic teachings…actually the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus and an embarrassment to other Catholics…
Most ill-informed, as always. you are ignorant of the facts, and should not presume to know me – I can out-Catholic you in my sleep and I can assure you, we will not meet in “heaven” – hope you like the heat…
I get no direct state or federal aid in the operation of my college.
You get the same kind of aid Liberty University gets, and Dan says Pell grants amount to government welfare for Liberty.
Ron’s college is on the government teat according to Dan.
#60 Computers are no longer optional for anybody at Tech, scott. They’re REQUIRED of everybody.
And a number of other majors also have extra fees etc. I know, my son is in one of those majors.
#57 “You have to get up pret-ty danged early to top Suziegirl.”
Nah, you have to go to bed at 11:45 a.m., sleep for 5-6 hours, and then get up at 3:10 a.m. Like suzie says she does.
I was aware of additional per credit fees at colleges… Just not exactly sure where or which majors it was associated with. But that’s good to know…
As for the other stuff, all majors have hidden costs… Some are higher than others.
As for my initial post, it was merely supposed to be tongue in cheek. I have no problem with subsidized majors.
In my opinion, all majors should cost equal amounts so long as everyone has access to the most up to date equipment for their desired major to make them competitive in their chosen field after graduation.
But even at $30 per credit hour, it’s a steal considering Tech’s website says engineering cost $117 more per credit hour than the university average.
#54 You all forget that suzie went to Catholic school where they had no glass in the windows and the heat didn’t work, the only bathrooms were outhouses, and she had to walk to and from school up hill both ways carrying a baked potato to keep her hands warm, which she then ate for lunch (the potato, not her hands). And the nuns beat the kids with baseball bats and the children begged for more.
#62 most ill-informed posted, “Nope. It was a tiny minority of gay priests who violated their vows.”
So not only a racist, a homophobic! To enlighten you a tad (that’s the limit of my expectations of you) – gay men are the most UNLIKELY candidates to be child molesters. Gay men like ADULTS of the same sex…is there anything you actually know?
There is no defense of the indefensible – priests who molest children – whichever sex – are pedophiles…that is the fact of the matter.