David R. Carlin Jr. (born 1938) is an American politician, author, and professor of sociology and philosophy.

Life and career

Born in

Pawtucket, Rhode Island Pawtucket is a city in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 75,604 at the 2020 census, making the city the fourth-largest in the state. Pawtucket borders Providence and East Providence to the south, Central Fall ...

, Carlin has resided in Newport since 1972. He was a Democratic majority leader of the

Rhode Island Senate The Rhode Island Senate is the upper house of the Rhode Island General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Rhode Island, the lower house being the Rhode Island House of Representatives. It is composed of 38 Senators, each of wh ...

. His total period of service in the state Senate ran from 1981 to 1993. He made an unsuccessful bid for the

Rhode Island's 1st congressional district Rhode Island's 1st congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Rhode Island. It includes all of Bristol and Newport counties, along with parts of Providence County, including most of the city of Providence. The di ...

in 1992. In 2012, he made a bid to return to the Rhode Island legislature, but was decisively defeated in a Democratic primary for the Rhode Island House of Representatives. He remains a registered Democrat but is strongly opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage. He served 12 years on the Newport School Committee and was at one time the chair of the Newport Democratic Party. Carlin is the author of five books: ''The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America'' (2003), ''Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?'' (2006), ''Homosexualism versus Catholicism'' (2012),''My Dear Bishops: an Open Letter to the American Catholic Bishops'' (2013), and
Three Sexual Revolutions: Catholic ~ Protestant ~ Atheist
' (2022). He has been an opinion columnist for two Catholic periodicals (''Commonweal'' and ''Our Sunday Visitor'') and two Catholic websites (Crisis and Aleteia). Carlin has been a full-time professor at the Community College of Rhode Island since 1984. He was a professor of

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

and

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

at the Newport campus of CCRI. On June 11, 2019, Carlin attracted controversy when he authored an op-ed in ''

The Providence Journal ''The Providence Journal'', colloquially known as the ''ProJo'', is a daily newspaper serving the metropolitan area of Providence, Rhode Island, and is the largest newspaper in Rhode Island. The newspaper was first published in 1829. The newspape ...

'' attacking the Equality Act as redundant given that the state already includes the LGBTQ community in its civil rights statutes, and in opposition to transgender athletes participating in sports on their chosen rather than biological identity, referring to them as the "weirdest members of society" and disruptive of sporting events and normal childhood development.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carlin, David Living people American Roman Catholics Roman Catholic writers Democratic Party Rhode Island state senators 1938 births Politicians from Pawtucket, Rhode Island Politicians from Newport, Rhode Island