Totally Gay

[Pangloss62]

[Elspode]

"From This Day Forward"? Wow...they got that album out in a hurry...

[warch]

My favorite comment on this so far has come from Jon Stewart who said something to the effect: it takes some doing to cede the moral highground to a drug dealing prostitute!

Ted publically denied all, he was happily married after all with 5 kids! until the evidence was shown to be solid and substantial,... then he slid and weasled- It was just a massage and I threw it away,.. then he finally caved and admitted he was naughty. He got caught. He had no intention of seeking forgiveness for his sins until he was forced to.

I dont care if he had gay sex or meth. Sounds like that might have been just what a powerful christian leader needed at the end of a long tent meeting. I am ammused that he is yet another example of Evangelical hypocricy that would damn gays and lesbians that live loving, peaceful, truthful live as sinning deviants all the while banging away in his closet.

[Pangloss62]

I can imagine that whatever kind of "massage" he got, it was made all the more exciting for the very fact it was a trip to the dark side (in his mind). He was being "bad." That probably was a rush at the time.

At least he had some class in telling his flock not to blame the escort dude.

But don't you guys find the way they each had their own letter a bit weird; like the wife had to apologize for her husband, as if SHE had responsibility to the flock. WTF indeed.

[richlevy]

Originally Posted by Pangloss62

But don't you guys find the way they each had their own letter a bit weird; like the wife had to apologize for her husband, as if SHE had responsibility to the flock. WTF indeed.

Well, if she'd been willing to wear jockey shorts and Old Spice to bed she might have kept him from temptation.

[Aliantha]

Hey...what's wrong with old spice and jockey shorts?

[morethanpretty]

I think she wrote her own letter in order to encourage the women of her church to stay strong in their own marriages. Not to take things for granted. I realize that he tried to step around the public humiliation and it took backing him into a corner to get his confession. BUT he has taken the blame on himself rather than try to project it onto the escort...he even tells his former congregation not to blame the escort (common reaction for ppl who don't want to accept the truth). He believes that homosexuality is a choice just like any other action a person might take. He's entitled to his belief, just like everyone else. He is ashamed that he broke his own moral code, just because he didn't volunteerly announce his deviation doesn't mean he isn't. Gah sorry its hard for me to say what I mean so I'll sum it up: He's a jerk for what he has done (not practicing what he preached) but he has somewhat retributed himself by his most current actions.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Pangloss62

But don't you guys find the way they each had their own letter a bit weird; like the wife had to apologize for her husband, as if SHE had responsibility to the flock. WTF indeed.

It indicated in her letter that she taught classes for women in the church. Not all church leaders are ordained. The pastor's wife is always a visible figure in the church even if she doesn't actively lead, and she does have a responsibility to the flock, insofar as her own behavior--and it would be a big question on everyone's mind whether she intended to leave her husband over this.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Agreed, she was as active and responsible as he was, in creating and building that particular Church into the cash cow/political force, it was.

[lhatcher]

Originally Posted by Pangloss62

"I created this entire situation. The things that I did opened the door for additional allegations. But I am responsible; I alone need to be disciplined and corrected.

Hey, do you think he wants his wife to do the disciplining and correction? A young man from the congragation perhaps? tee-hee

[Pangloss62]

...to deconstruct the Haggard debacle.


Here's a piece from today's NYT by Dan Savage (Savage Love, etc.) on the whole Haggard thing. He pretty much nails the situation in every respect:

I once had a friend who did sex work, which is a nice way of saying that he was a prostitute.

He was based in Los Angeles and one of his clients was a movie star. Not just any movie star, but a top male movie star. A sex symbol. This guy used to fly my friend first class to far-flung locales, usually to unwind after a big location shoot.

Sorry, but I can?t tell you who this movie star is. It?s not that I?m afraid of being sued or that I disapprove of outing. Nope, the reason I can?t tell you the name of this movie star is, well, I don?t know it. No matter how many times I asked, no matter how much I pried, my friend simply wouldn?t tell me the guy?s name. My friend wouldn?t even tell me where he was meeting his famous client, lest the places where his films were being shot offered a telling clue.

My friend took the callboy?s code of silence seriously.

Besides the sheer scale of the hypocrisy, the Ted Haggard scandal doesn?t tell us much we don?t already know about closeted gay or bisexual men; closet cases will take enormous risks to get their needs met and will often do great harm to themselves and to those they profess to love. What?s new in the Haggard scandal ? perhaps we should call it a flameout ? is the refusal of Mike Jones, a former male prostitute, to honor the callboy?s code of silence, the omertà of gay hookerdom.

On the Web site where Mr. Haggard is said to have found Mr. Jones, the callboys describe themselves as discreet. That?s their solemn promise not to blab to the wife, if you?re married; to the tabloids (or prying friends), if you?re a movie star; to your congregation, if you?re one of the most powerful evangelical ministers in the country. The fear that callboys can no longer be trusted will make the lives of men like Ted Haggard that much more lonely and difficult.

Back in the bad old days ? the mythical 1950s, the era social conservatives pine for ? most gay men were closeted, which made it relatively easy for them to arrange discreet trysts. You could rely on the discretion of your sex partners because they were relying on yours. It was the era of mutually assured destruction, both in terms of nuclear warfare and gay sex. Your partner couldn?t reveal your secret without revealing his own.

Needless to say, a sex life infused with cold-war-style tensions didn?t lead to many healthy or lasting relationships.

Today gay and bisexual men live openly, making the modern closet a much less crowded place. While once all the best gay men were closeted, now the only adults you find in the closet are the fearful, the pathetic and the hypocritical. The men you meet in today?s closet are the ones with a great deal to lose if their secrets are exposed. They?re gay men with lucrative careers that would collapse if they came out; gay men whose obscenely wealthy families would disown them if they lived openly; or gay men leading large congregations that would dismiss them if they knew the truth about their pastor.

A less crowded closet doesn?t just mean slimmer pickings for men like Ted Haggard, but unreliable ones as well. While once you could be certain that the closeted gay man you were sleeping with would still be closeted 10 or 20 years in the future, now you never know. The closeted gay man you entrust with your secret today may be out next year. As he has nothing left to hide, your secret is no longer safe. Better hope you parted on good terms.

Which is why so many powerful closet cases turn to callboys. It?s not just the callboy?s promise of discretion, but the sense that the old dynamics ? mutually assured destruction ? remain in force. A callboy can?t expose your secret without exposing his own. There?s still a stigma attached to selling sex.

So why did Mike Jones speak out?

Because today it is arguably more shameful and damaging to be a hypocritical closet case than it is to be a sex worker. Even those delighted by Mr. Haggard?s disgrace ? disclosure: I count myself among their number ? ache for his five children, all suffering now for the sins of their father. And let me be clear: their father?s sin is not his sexual orientation, but his deceit and hypocrisy. His sin is the closet.

When Representative Mark Foley flamed out, Pat Robertson said: ?Well, this man?s gay. He does what gay people do.? That lie might have worked when most gay Americans were closeted, but it doesn?t work anymore. Seventy percent of Americans today know a gay person; for straight Americans, hitting on teenagers, hiring prostitutes and snorting meth are not things their gay relatives, friends and co-workers typically do. (Or not at appreciably higher rates than their straight friends.) An openly gay man is accountable to himself, his family, his partner and his community. He is free to form healthy relationships, which is why he is far less likely to be I.M.?ing teenagers or hiring hookers than some desperate closet case.

Ultimately it was Ted Haggard?s hypocrisy ? railing against homosexuals and campaigning against gay marriage while apparently indulging in sex romps with a gay escort ? that prompted Mr. Jones to shove him out of the closet. The homophobia promoted by Mr. Haggard and other agents of intolerance, if I may use John McCain?s phrase (he?s not using it anymore), undermined the callboy code of silence that Mr. Haggard himself relied on. Most callboys are gay, after all, and most are out of the closet these days.

And while most callboys will continue to respect a code of silence where the average closet case is concerned, the Ted Haggards of the world have been placed on notice: You can?t have your callboy and disparage him too.

Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly, and the author of ?The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family.?

[BigV]

Another one.

An Episcopalian chaplain resigned from his job at a Palmetto Bay private school after explicit images of him appeared on a gay wrestling website that was circulated this week around the school, school officials said.

Father Adrian Parry, 47, of South Miami, quit his post at Palmer Trinity School on Monday after almost two decades as its chaplain and head of the humanities and history department, according to school headmaster Sean Murphy.

[Pangloss62]

Well, after reading about "closet" psychology, this is anything but weird. It seems that closetting yourself leads to extreme manifestations of, as Savage said, what you "need."

In the end, I hope all this discussion will normalize homosexuality to a point where such "extremes" are not required to BE who you are.

[9th Engineer]

Lets not get too carried away with the idea that anyone has immutable traits. Who you ARE is a concept under constant flux, and has very little or nothing to do with genetics as long as we leave physical structure out of the picture. If someone loves to play the piano, can't for whatever reason we don't say that they can't be who they ARE.
Why can't we say that people ARE other things that they may or may not want to be in other cases, but we have to accept that sexual orientation inseperable from who a person is? If it's true, then wouldn't it also be true that we have other traits that others must accept at face value no matter what? Who gets to decide what these are?

(the thread was turning into the 1,000 list of gay figures/rant about how people need to stop questioning gay-ness, it needed some sprucing up)

[Elspode]

In this particular case, what the guy *is* is a bisexual pastor of a religion that doesn't allow him to be that way. I would be very interested in how *he* rationalized his homosexual behavior with his deity, and how he was able to condemn the acts while performing them.

I'd be even more interested to see how his mental health evolves as he tries to rid himself of this "affliction" under the loving supervision of his wife and whoever agrees to mentor his "recovery".

I think he should just love Jesus *and* Jose.