Tag: Gay Politics

Investigation Finds Rev. Ted Haggard Hit on Men in Congregation

Jon Ponder

Earlier this month, Rev. Tim Ralph, one of the ministers charged with degayifying self-hating homo evangelist Ted Haggard announced that Haggard had been completely cured, and anyway, he only had sex with the gay prostitute and no one else:

We have verified the reality of that struggle through numerous individuals who reported to us firsthand knowledge of everything from sordid conversation to overt suggestions to improper activities to improper relationships.

In investigating Haggard’s assertion that his extramarital sexual contact was limited to former male escort Mike Jones, the board talked to people close to Haggard and found no evidence contradicting him, Ralph said.

“If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,” he said. “We’re into this thing over 90 days, and it hasn’t happened.”

Well, Rev. Tim, it has now. The people in charge at Haggard’s former mega-church have done what they say is a “reality verification” on their former leader, and it appears Ted may need further degayification:

“[We] have done extensive fact-finding into his lifelong battle with a ‘dark side’ which he said in his confession letter has been a struggle for years,” Pastor Larry Stockstill, part of the church’s board of overseers, told the 14,000-member congregation Sunday.

“We have verified the reality of that struggle through numerous individuals who reported to us firsthand knowledge of everything from sordid conversation to overt suggestions to improper activities to improper relationships. These findings established a pattern of behavior that culminated in the final relationship in which Ted was, as a matter of grace, caught,” he said.

Stockstill did not elaborate…

None needed. Ted was perving on men in his church, and even leading some of them astray. Looks like Pastor Ted has a lot more gay to pray away.

The Week in Gay

Jon Ponder

Enough to make your head spin:

Is Gay: Whoever heard of a British pro basketball player? John Amaechi played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, Utah Jazz, Orlando Magic and the New York Nicks. He came out after he retired, and has written a book, “Man in the Middle.”

Is Not Gay: If Rene Zellweger hadn’t married him and then divorced him practically the next day on grounds of “fraud,” I would have no clue who Kenny Chesney is. I have still never heard him sing (and have no desire to) but I will say that just looking at his photo, well, sorry dude, but you look gay. My gaydar has been wrong before and he insists on “60 Minutes” this Sunday that he is not.

Protests Too Much: One of Amaechi’s former colleages, Tim Hardaway, made the kind of statement that always makes me suspicious: “I hate gay people. I let it be known, I don’t like gay people. I don’t like to be around gay people.” My experience is, guys who are secure in their sexuality just don’t think about homos very much, if at all. Anyway, Hardaway has apologized. Next step, rehab, probably.

Gay President: A Gallup poll from last week found that 55 percent of Americans would vote for gay person for president, while 43 percent would not. By comparison, 95 percent said they would vote for a Catholic (4 percent would not); 94 percent said they would vote for a black candidate (5 percent would not) and 67 percent said they would vote someone who was married for a third time (like Giuliani) and 30 percent would not.

Fla. Gov. Says GOP Wasting $$ on Gay-Marriage Ban

Buck Banks

Duh: I suppose if I were a Republican, this story might mean more to me, but as far as I’m concerned, as long as the Florida GOP wants to piss its money away, who cares? Charlie Crist has turned out to be a pleasant surprise as governor of our state, especially following Jeb Bush’s lock-step Repug tribalism approach to running Florida’s political machine.

So Crist tells his party to stop spending money trying to pass legislation banning gay marriage in Florida (actually, it just defines marriage as between a man a woman, so it’s a positive, not a negative, piece of law — or so the GOP would have us believe).

The Florida GOP spent $300,000 touting the proposed state constitutional amendment narrowly defining marriage between a man and woman.

Under Crist’s predecessor, Jeb Bush, the Florida GOP spent $300,000 touting the proposed state constitutional amendment narrowly defining marriage between a man and woman. The GOP money was 54 percent of the total raised by the amendment’s backers, Florida4Marriage.org, which is still shy 28,000 voter-signed petitions to get the measure on the 2008 ballot.

Though Crist signed the petition and says he backs the measure, hardliners have expressed suspicion about his self-described “live-and-let-live-Republican” stance.

”I just think [the Republican Party’s] money can be better spent on other things that may be more pressing, like elections, for example,” Crist said. “I think that the people care about issues like insurance premiums. They care about property taxes. They care about public safety. And I think it’s important that not only those of us in government, but the party, focus on those issues, too.”

It’s interesting to see who is actually pushing the legislation. A clue can be gleaned from the identity of the guy who argued the case before the Florida Supreme Court:

Matthew Staver, an Orlando attorney who argued for the amendment before the Florida Supreme Court, said Crist’s statement was not a retreat from his pledge of support for the amendment. But he thinks Crist is wrong about whether the amendment is a priority.

”Charlie Crist has his priorities misplaced if he thinks it’s not money well spent,” said Staver, the law school dean of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. “It’s one of the most important issues government can face. It deals with marriage and the family.’

Why, you may ask, is the dean of the law school of Liberty U. fighting the good fight before the state o’ Florida? Because Liberty University is Jerry Falwell’s institution of higher indoctrination and the source of much of the Christian evil spread throughout the land. I’m sure Staver is being farmed out to argue similar cases in states all across the country, and probably on Falwell’s dime. Hopefully, with similar results.

There were whispered suspicions about Charlie Crist’s alleged heterosexuality during the campaign, and I suppose some will make the argument that Crist is actually pursuing a double-top-secret agenda of supporting gay rights issues while “passing” as straight.

Anyway, I like Charlie for calling ’em like he sees ’em and doing and saying what he — not the Repug Party — thinks is right.

Saving Marriage: Life Sentences for Adulterers, Forced Annulments for Childlessness

Jon Ponder

There have been two exciting developments recently in the campaign to protect marriage. In Ohio and Michigan wingnuts are pushing adultery laws with life-sentence penalties. In Washington state, liberals have proposed a law that prohibits infertile couples from marrying and annuls marriages that have not produced children after three years.

Count me in. I’m strongly in favor of both these efforts, and believe they warrant serious debate.

Criminalizing Adultery

Rightwing anti-marriage activists say that allowing same-sex couples to wed would destroy the institution of marriage.

But any rational observer would say that it isn’t homos who are wrecking marriage, it’s adulterers who cause most marriages to fail. And since about half of marriages end in divorce, we can surmise that there is a whole lot of adultery going on.

If conservatives feel as strongly as they say they do, why not make adultery punishable by death?

I have long been an advocate of taking the anti-marriage right at its word and criminalizing adultery — after all, it’s in the Bible. One of the Big Ten: Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.

Conversely, nowhere in the Ten Commandments does it say Thou shalt not be gay. In fact, there is nothing of any consequence about gay sex in either Testament.

I was surprised to learn last week that several states already (or, rather, still) have laws on the books against adultery. In Michigan, the penalty for sexual misconduct is a life sentence.

Now we’re talking!

[…]

It’s a Miracle: Rev. Ted Haggard Is ‘Completely Heterosexual’ Now

Jon Ponder

Here is good news for unhappy homos and homo-hating Christians alike. Rev. Ted Haggard has completed his therapy and apparently has forsworn consorting with male prostitutes forever. After only three weeks of therapy, he has been judged to be “completely heterosexual” now:

Evangelicals believe science has a liberal bias.

“He is completely heterosexual,” [said Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur, Colorado, one of four ministers who oversaw Haggard’s re-education therapy.] “That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”

Ralph said the board spoke with people close to Haggard while investigating his claim that his only extramarital sexual contact happened with Mike Jones. The board found no evidence to the contrary.

“If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,” he said. “We’re into this thing over 90 days and it hasn’t happened.”

Science, of course, says that sexual identity is engrained and immutable, and that no amount of guilt, recrimination or praying away the gay can change it. Of course, Evangelicals like Rev. Haggard believe science has a liberal bias, as Stephen Colbert put it.

No word on whether Haggard addressed the issues behind his and his wife’s admitted use of crystal methadrine.

Cheney Refuses to Defend Gay Daughter Against Rightwing Attacks

Jon Ponder

Despicable: Vice Pres. Dick Cheney is apparently deeply ashamed of his gay daughter, Mary. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer yesterday, the vice president refused to defend Mary against Christian extremist smears directed at her pregnancy. Instead, Cheney resorted to attacking Blitzer for asking the question:

“I think that family members ought to be off the limits.”
— White House spokesman Tony Snow

BLITZER: You know, we’re out of time, but a couple of issues I want to raise with you: your daughter, Mary. She’s pregnant. All of us are happy she’s going to have a baby. You’re going to have another grandchild. Some of the — some critics are suggesting — for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, “Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children. Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean that it’s best for the child.” Do you want to respond to that?

CHENEY: No.

BLITZER: She’s, obviously, a good daughter —

CHENEY: I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf. And obviously I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question.

BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate —

CHENEY: I think you’re out of line.

BLITZER: We like your daughters. Believe me, I’m very sympathetic to Liz and to Mary. I like them both. That was a question that’s come up, and it’s a responsible, fair question.

CHENEY: I just fundamentally disagree with you.

BLITZER: I want to congratulate you on having another grandchild.

What a horrendous man Dick Cheney is. There are any number of ways he could have fielded this question — a gentle punt, for example, “We’re all entitled to our opinions, Wolf. I just respectfully disagree with the criticism” — but instead he chose a political tactic: Attack the messenger, Blizter, a representative of the purported liberal media, which will play well with his troglodyte base.

Later, White House spokesman Tony Snow had this outrageous reaction:

“People should not be trying to draw family members in,” Snow said on Fox News Channel. “I think that family members ought to be off the limits.”

Unless the “people” drawing family members in are Republicans, and the families in question belong to Democrats such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

Wyoming: Bang! Your Gay Marriage is Void

Buck Banks

Head ’em off at the pass: So let’s just say a couple of guys from Boston who were legally married under Massachusetts law decided to move to Wyoming to live out their Brokeback Mountain fantasy. According to a bill being considered by the state legislature, as soon as they crossed the border into Wyoming, their marriage would cease to exist in the eyes of the state. Seems lind of silly, don’t it?

I cannot envision hordes of married gay couples from Massachusetts, England, Canada, Amsterdam or any place like that thronging to Wyoming at any point in the near future.

Massachusetts is the only state that currently grants marriage licenses to same-sex couples; others permit civil unions but the proposed law only pertains to gay marriages. Wyoming already has a law in place that mandates marriages conducted in the state must be between a man and woman.

“All the bill does is say that we don’t have to honor the same-sex marriages that are performed in other states,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Gerald E. Geis, R-Worland, said. “If a couple came from Massachusetts, or wherever they allow same-sex marriage, we would not have to recognize it here.”

Gay rights groups say the measure is unnecessary.

“I don’t know where the fear of a mass influx of married gay people entering Wyoming and demanding recognition comes from,” said the Rev. Bob Spencer, social change coordinator for Wyoming Equality. “I cannot envision hordes of (married gay) couples from Massachusetts, England, Canada, Amsterdam or any place like that thronging to Wyoming at any point in the near future.”

Carrie Evans, state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, echoed that: “Surely the Wyoming legislature has real problems to deal with.”

But a co-sponsor of the bill, Rep. Owen Petersen, R-Mountain View, said the measure is extremely important. “In the past 30 years, most of the statistics support the fact that with the loss of marriage and a stable home environment there are more adverse impacts on society with crime and with various other things that cause a deterioration of our whole country,” Petersen said.

Note that Wyoming is the least populous state in the union, with just over 500,000 residents. Seems like there would be enough room in the Big Sky country to accommodate a few gay and lesbian married couples without undermining the fabric of Wyoming society …

WingNut Daily Columnist: Soy Causes Homosexuality and Small Penises

Jon Ponder

Listen up, men. WorldNetDaily columnist Jim Rutz has a warning for you: If you consume soybean products such as tofu or soy milk, you will become gay and, worse, your penis will get smaller:

Rutz says homosexuality is a choice — and yet it is still caused by consuming soy products. Doh! I can’t win.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

Of course, none of this is even remotely true:

While it is true that soy products contain estrogen, there is nothing to support that it causes homosexuality or “feminizing” of men who eat them.

Rutz notably fails to quote from a medical source to support his argument, merely referring to generalizations that he spins to his own ends. In searching for any medical reasons for his arguments, I found the opposite.

The official stance of the American Psychological Society [APS] is that there is no defineable single cause for homosexuality, and that it is likely a combination of biological, genetic, and environmental factors….

[The] APS states that there is no evidence for a rise in homosexuality. Rather, there is a rise in people willing to admit they are homosexual.

Talk about having it both ways. Rutz says homosexuality is a choice — and yet it is still caused by consuming soy products. Doh! I can’t win.

Even funnier is the idea that research exists on human males that correlates soy intake with genital size.

Poll: 73 % of U.S. Military Ready to Ditch ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

Jon Ponder
[Nearly] three out of four troops said in the Zogby poll that they usually or almost always take showers privately – only 8 percent say they usually or almost always take showers in group stalls.

Straight people who are secure about their own sexuality do not feel threatened by gay people. That fact is underscored in a new Zogby poll that found that three out of four (73 percent) of active duty military personnel said they feel comfortable around gay people.

Conversely, people who are conflicted about their own sexual attractions and try to hide them often feel hostility toward gay men and women. In the Zogby poll:

Of the 20 percent who said they are uncomfortable around gays and lesbians, only 5 percent are “very” uncomfortable, while 15 percent are “somewhat” uncomfortable. Just two percent of troops said knowing that gays are not allowed to serve openly was an important reason in their decision to join the military.

Another takeaway from the poll is that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which was supposed to expell gay people who refused to stay closeted, simply is not working:

Nearly one in four U.S. troops (23 percent) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59 percent said they learned about the person’s sexual orientation directly from the individual, a Zogby International poll of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows.

More than half (55 percent) of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. According to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, service members are not allowed to say that they are gay…

Of those in combat units, 21 percent said they know for certain that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, slightly less than for those in combat support units (25 percent) and combat service support units (22 percent. One in five troops (20 percent) in other units said they know for certain someone is gay or lesbian in their unit. Overall, nearly half (45 percent) say there are people in their unit they suspect are gay or lesbian, but they don’t know for sure. Slightly more than half (52 percent) say they have received training on the prevention of anti-gay harassment in the past three years. But 40 percent say they have not received this type of training, which is mandated by Defense Department policy.

But what about showers, where gays could perv on their straight comrades:

[Nearly] three out of four troops said in the Zogby poll that they usually or almost always take showers privately – only 8 percent say they usually or almost always take showers in group stalls.

You have to wonder how many of the 8 percent who use the public showers are subset of the 5 percent who were “very uncomfortable” around gay people.

Haggard’s Church Launches Witch Hunt to Out Closeted Gay Staffers

Jon Ponder

Loving and accepting these men for who they are, as God made them, without judging them, apparently never crossed these Christians’ minds.

What would jesus do if one of his apostles was nabbed for lustful behavior? Why he would encourage the rest of the apostles to secretly turn in their colleagues for similar behavior, of course.

In the wake of the scandal caused by hidden sexuality of its former head pastor, Ted Haggard, that’s exactly what the leadership of New Life Church in Colorado did. They encouraged church members to secretly inform on other closeted gays on the staff. The Soviet-style turn-in-your-neighbors pogrom has already produced results, with the announcement of the resignation of an associate pastor:

Christopher Beard, who headed a ministry the New Life Church that trained young adults in leadership skills, has stepped down after admitting to an incident of sexual misconduct several years ago and a series of decisions displaying poor judgment.

Church elders declined to disclose what the sexual misconduct involved, except to say it did not involve minors…

Fearing another potential scandal that could destroy the 14,000 member church elders asked parishioners for information about the “spiritual character” of other church staff and leaders.

Members are urged to fill out a form on the church’s Web site that goes to a panel of four pastors from other churches that have agreed to help New Life weed out problem people.

Associate pastor Rob Brendle denies it is a witch hunt but says “we want to give people who feel they have relevant information access to people in authority.”

Loving and accepting these men for who they are, as God made them, without judging them, apparently never crossed these Christians’ minds.

Just think: If Jesus had encouraged his apostles to rat each other out, perhaps he would have gotten wind of Judas’ scheme to turn him over to the Romans, and he could have avoided the whole cruxifixion, ascending-into-heaven thing.