The abuse is against the underlying standard of essential equality, and that may be the issue that sends so many people into fits over the question of the very existence of homosexual persons who enjoy both the hold on sanity the Evelyn Hooker demonstrated and the genuine engagement with ethical issues that Mike Jones did. If some kind of essential interpersonal equality exists, then hierarchical social systems are problematical, especially if they regularly lead to the kind of abuses we are discussing here. What scares the devotees of such systems is that they fear equality itself. Preferring to see social life as a war in which they only get what they want by affiliating with powerful men (and maybe Margaret Thatcher once in a while) to take it away from people whom they identify as so entirely less deserving that they should convert to their particular system and advertise their low rank, or just go away and die (with or without help).

To such persons, the idea that the rest of us might actually be working together to create a society in which we freely go home at the end of the day to our own versions of those biblical vine and fig tree packages (instead of using the rhetoric to operate a competing hierarchical system) is the biggest threat of all because it rejects their claims to power over us.

Definitely hot. If I wasn’t attached, I’d snatch him up in a New York minute.

Grant: you are gorgeous! Get out of that hell-hole you’re in and move to Boulder, Denver, LA, SF, Portland, Seattle….meet some hot guys and get yourself a boyfriend you can go to church with.

It will change your life.

God loves you as your fabulous, gorgeous, gay self! Don’t forget it!

That said, it does seem as though Grant is going through a very emotionally confusing time. His first mistake was looking to the evangelical community for support. His second mistake is getting caught up in drugs and alcohol.

I hope he gets the help he needs. Move to SF, girlfriend, and get into a good mainline church, go back to school, and stay away from Crystal.

But within the KRDO video we see another Grant Haas, one that seemed to be in better physical health and who had a more hopeful expression in his eyes. One which I think most folks could agree fit society’s general consensus about attractiveness.

And perhaps that is the most infuriating part of this new development. Grant Haas’ emotional health took a hit by all of this and he reported turning to alcohol and drugs. It seems he may have also turned to food and to a loss of self-worth.

I hope Haas has – or finds – happiness. But it seems to me that Haggard has far worse sins on his conscience than sexual indiscretions or even dishonesty. He has harmed the well being of others.

Ick. In the KRDO article, New Life’s Boyd strived to assure his megachurch contributers that Haas’ hush money was being paid by insurance – not their tithes. However, if the money is paid by insurance, why isn’t the church paying as agreed?

Admittedly, I don’t know much about insurance settlements, but why would the settlement have to be paid in installments and isn’t the supposed insurance company concerned about futher legal exposure from Haas by not paying as agreed? Boyd says the church will not request Haas return any funds for speaking out, but he does’t say if the church, er, insurance company will fulfill its agreement.

I think it’s shameful that the Moody Bible Institute kicked him out. In the conservative Christian world, in their terms, he was only asking for help and they “should” have only asked him to go to some Exodus affiliate. But they threw him out. (in the regular world, I would want them to completely accept him and for him to accept himself.) But they didn’t even do theformer.

Just because he’s not your definition of cute doesn’t mean anything. I’m no “gay-boi” stereotype, either; in fact I think he and I share more than a few characteristics, physically.

And there are plenty of people who find me attractive, not in spite, but BECAUSE of who I am.

If you can’t wrap your worldview around that, well, perhaps you could go be brutish elsewhere.

(Oh, and for the record, Piper, I, too think that he’s a cute fellow.)