Box Turtle Bulletin

Haggard Accuser Says Haggard Encouraged Sex, Drug Use

Last night, Colorado Springs’ KRDO aired their long-promised report on Grant Haas, a former New Life Church volunteer who came forward with more allegations about then-pastor Ted Haggard.

Grant joined New Life Church after having been kicked out of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for revealing his sexual orientation to the Dean of Students. He told the dean that he was “struggling” and asked for help. The Dean told him they wouldn’t be able to help him, but suggested he go to Colorado Springs. Hass was only a semester away from getting a Bachelors degree in Pastoral Theology.

Four months after arriving in Colorado Springs and becoming a part of New Life Church, Ted Haggard asked him “What’s your story and what are you doing here?” Haas explained his situation, and he said Haggard’s eyes lit up and his whole demeanor changed toward him from then on.

In the KRDO video report, Grant does not confirm that any direct sexual contact took place bewteen himself and Haggard. Instead, in the accompanying article, Grant describes an incident when the two went on a trip to Cripple Creek:

“He asked me if we were going to be godly or bad that night,” Grant says, recalling their trip. The former volunteer says that meant either hanging out as friends, or buying Haggard porn and masturbate. I told him that I didn’t want that,” says Grant.

After a day in the small mountain town, both went back to Haggard’s hotel room. Grant says he just wanted Haggard to be his pastor and friend, but according to the young man, as they were lying in bed Haggard asked if he could masturbate. Grant told him no, but says Haggard did it anyway. “I couldn’t move,” says Grant. Grant was fearful to say anything to anyone. “He kind of made me have a guilt trip about it, so I wouldn’t say anything about it,” Grant remembers.

According to the video report, “after that life-changing night at Cripple Creek, Grant says he fell back into isolation, drinking heavily and taking prescription drugs. He says he even tried to commit suicide four separate times.”

Meanwhile over the next several months, Haas and Haggard exchanged between 1,000 to 2,000 text messages a month, many of them concerning sex and drug use. “It was like he had two personalities, it was like here is this 50-year-old pastor who is the ultimate man of God and then, this 16-year old horny boy who couldn’t keep himself together,” Grant said.

New Life Church agreed to pay Haas $180,000 for counseling and other expenses, with a stipulation that neither party talk about what transpired between Haas and Haggard. But Grant says that despite the agreement, the church continually neglected to pay his medical bills.

“I really felt the church staff did what they could to get me to move to a different city, to get me to stop going to the church, to make these promises to do whatever they could to help, but their main focus was to cover it up,” says Grant. “They think Ted Haggard is not a harm to this community and I really think they’re wrong, they’re dead wrong.”

The KRDO video report also contains excerpts from taped telephone conversations between Haas and Haggard, in which Haggard acknowledged and apologized for his inappropriate behavior and thanked Grant for deleting the text messages.

Here is the full KRDO video report:

Gee Sigourney, Thanks for the, um…. Support?

Sigourney Weaver, star of Prayers for Bobby, expressed how challenging she found the role.

“I think all I did was think about how much I love my daughter and if she had something that was weighing on her, that she felt was bigger than her and that she wouldn’t be able to come to me and have me listen,” Weaver said, getting teary. “I’m not saying it’s not frightening for the parents. I think it would be very frightening. I think all parents do is try to keep their kids from leading lives that are dangerous or unsafe. And this is a tough life.”

A tough life… um, ya mean like that dangerous and unsafe “homosexual lifestyle” that anti-gay activists tell us about?

I really hope that AP misquoted you, Sigourney. If not, you need to get out and meet some actual living breathing happy gay people. The kind that aren’t living dangerous, unsafe, or even “tough” lives.

I appreciate you for starring in this story but… oh, well, I’ll just leave it at that.

Breedlove: “I Kissed A Pol And I Liked It”

In an interview published over the weekend, Beau Breedlove told The Oregonian that he and Portland Mayor Sam Adams kissed twiced while Breedlove was still seventeen. But Breedlove, who recently ended a two-year relationship with another 38-year-old man, insists that he wasn’t a victim:

“I do not see any relationship that I ever had with Sam as me being taken advantage of,” Breedlove said. “I do not feel like I was ever a victim. I may have been 17, but I was an adult, and I knew what I was doing.”

Meanwhile, Portland Mayor Sam Adams has decided not to resign. Hopefully in the past week, he’s done some thinking about how he deals with accepting responsibility as an adult, as a leader, as a gay man — and as a man, period.

Anti-Gay Arguments We Don’t Bother With (And Should): Part 1

Some anti-gay statements/ideas make me huff in frustration, but because they seem — on the very face of it — silly, I huff and move on. These comments are iterated in casual conversations and debates but rarely receive close scrutiny because they don’t make it onto CNN discussion panels or the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times. They are the stuff of anonymous online comments, the product of an amateur punditocracy. But these memes are powerful; while an offensive comment posted on one of Chris Crocker’s YouTube videos may not be suitable for public debate, it is perhaps more indicative of where public opinion stands — and what people, in the comfort of their homes and under the cloak of anonymity, really think.

I wanted to dedicate a series of posts (five in total) to crazy anti-gay arguments and encourage BTB’s readers to respond to and engage them below.

#1: Any man — even a gay one — can marry a woman. Therefore, it is not discriminatory to deny marriage rights to members of the same sex given that a straight man can’t marry a man, either.

What irritates me about this is that it very obviously misses the point and tries to win the argument on a technicality: “Aha! The law treats everyone the same — I can’t marry someone of the same sex and neither can you.” Underlying the argument is a very amateur understanding of what it means for the law to “treat everyone the same.”

Let me try a reductio ad absurdum (though it seems to me almost like a straight analogy):

• If the government passes a law requiring everyone to practice Christianity, it doesn’t infringe on the rights of those who are Jewish because they are treated equally; Christians can’t practice Judaism and neither can Jews.

Or to invert the principle:

• Men aren’t granted the right to terminate their own pregnancy/abort, therefore the law is discriminatory against men.
• Children are discriminated against because they are not allowed to buy guns.

The argument above is conflating and misunderstanding a number of issues:

First, what the right in question is. The real argument that proponents of LGBT rights are making is that the “fundamental right” in question is the right to marry the person one loves, not to marry someone of the other sex. It is also a moot point/irrelevant whether a straight person can or can’t marry someone of the same sex given that they do not want to (in the same way that, above, it is irrelevant whether or not a Christian is forbidden from practicing Judaism). I take exception with the narrow interpretation of the “marriage right” under dispute.

Second, the understanding of what it means for the law to treat everyone equally. “Equal treatment” without regard to the interests of the individual, age, identity etc. leads one to adopt silly positions such as those mentioned above. For very obvious reasons, the law does not treat all groups equally (though it strives to treat them equitably). Certain groups are “suspect classifications” and subject to special state protection. Thus, groups like Jews, blacks, and women are considered “suspect classifications” and protected from tyrannical interpretations of the equal protection clause. It is because the law does not strictly “treat everyone equally” that we can’t pass a law that says everyone has to practice Christianity just because it applies to everyone.

The premise of the argument — that the law is just so long as it “treats everyone equally” — is wrong. So is its narrow understanding of the right in question.

Next installment: The ‘slippery-slope’ argument: why allowing gay marriage does not entail allowing bestiality

Breaking: Mike Jones Speaks Out About Latest Ted Haggard Revelations

In a new, emotionally charged YouTube video, Mike Jones voices his anger with New Life Church and their past refusal to admit what they had known all along: that there were others in the church who had had a sexual relationship with then-Pastor Ted Haggard. In this video statement, Jones reveals that he tried to contact New Life Church when others were coming to him with stories about similar contacts with Ted Haggard:

I knew that there were others, others that I could not publicly out. They had to do it themselves. But they were scared. Some of their parents knew about what was going on at the church. And some of the parents just wanted to turn a blind eye to it.

I also realized it was going to be just probably me, out there all alone facing the press, facing the criticism.

Now when Brady Boyd took over as pastor of New Life Church, I contacted him. I wanted to talk to him about these other young men that were coming to me with their stories. This was serious.

And you know, Pastor Boyd refused to meet with me.

Mike Jones also talks about what he endured — including from within the gay community — after revealing his sexual contact with Ted Haggard. Mike expresses considerable anger over what he went through, particularly those who  dismissed him as “just a whore” who was “just escorting.”

But the greater part of his anger reserved for New Life Church, which for the past two years maintained the fiction that Mike was the only person Ted Haggard had sexual contact with — even though they knew differently:

[M]ost of my anger is at New Life Church. For over two years, I have suffered being all alone out there, taking all the heat for all that’s going on. For all this time, they knew there were others. And they paid hush money to this man to be quiet, when they could have admitted it, that there were others right at that moment. And that would have helped me out so much, instead of putting me out there to face it all on my own.

I am so angry at the church. They stated at that time that Mike Jones was the only man out there that had relations with Ted Haggard. And it’s wrong and it was a lie. And they owe me an apology.

Watch it:

[Video filmed and edited by BTB’s Daniel Gonzales on behalf of Mike Jones]

Click here to read a transcript of Mike Jones’ statement

Update On Latest Ted Haggard Revelation

Colorado Springs KRDO television reporter Tak Landrock appeared in a teaser of a report promising a full report on Monday about a second accuser against Ted Haggard. The unnamed young man, described as being in his twenties, said that some of his sexual encounters with Ted Haggard as non-consensual, and he revealed that the church paid him a large sum of money to keep quiet about it.

The KRDO teaser contained a brief telephone conversation between the young man and Haggard, in which Haggard admits to the relationship. New Life Church, which Ted Haggard founded and pastored  until his fall from grace, has refused to respond to questions from KRDO.

We noticed that the church’s statement on the latest accusations acknowledged that there were others who had a sexual relationship with Ted Haggard. KRDO has confirmed that observation.

Haggard is scheduled to appear on CNN’s Larry King Live on Thursday, and he already has taped a segment on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”  “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” a documentary about Ted Haggard’s fall from grace, will premiere on HBO on Thursday.

Pope Benedict XVI Rehabilitates Holocaust Denier, Anti-Semite and 9-11 Conspiracist

With Pope Benedict XVI saying such outrageous things as describing same-sex marriage as an “obstacle on the road to peace,” or opposing the decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide — including in countries that carry the death penalty even though the Vatican is itself opposed to the death penalty — it’s hard to imagine him surprising us much. And yet, he manages not merely to surprise, but astonish:

The Pope has lifted the excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church of four bishops appointed by a breakaway archbishop more than 20 years ago. One of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s appointees, Briton Richard Williamson, outraged Jews by saying the Nazi gas chambers did not exist.

Those views were aired in remarks Williamson gave in a Swedish television interview. In a video of Williamson’s remarks to Swedish television, he says:

I believe that the historical evidence — the historical evidence — is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolph Hitler.

…

I believe there were no gas chambers. Yes. As far as I have studied the evidence. I’m not going by emotion. I’m going by as far as I’ve understood the evidence. I think, for instance, people who are against what is widely believed today about the quote-unquote the Holocaust, I think that people, those people conclude — the revisionists as they’re called — I think the most serious conclude that between two and three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber.

Williamson went on to cite as his “historical evidence” a so-called gas chamber “expert,” Fred Leuchter, who wrote that the remnants of buildings presented as gas chambers couldn’t have been gas chambers. A brief description of Leuchter’s work is available here, including a thorough debunking of his “investigation.” A more thorough debunking is here.

It turns out that Williamson is a fan of a lot of remarkable anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In a September 2002 newsletter, Williamson charges that “Judeo-Masonry is known to have been envisaging three World Wars to achieve its unified global domination”:

By lies, Judeo-Masonry brought about the first two World Wars. To get Americans to enter the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson told them that it would be the “war to end all wars.” In fact, WWI established the Masonic League of Nations in Geneva and the Communist Revolution in Russia, and crushed numerous Christian monarchies, in particular the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire. And the Masonic Treaty of Versailles ending WWI deliberately paved the way for WWII, of which President F.D. Roosevelt promised it would “make the world safe for democracy.” In fact, WWII established the Masonic United Nations, hugely promoted socialism in the USA and in the Western “democracies,” and crushed the Eastern “democracies” under Communism.

By lies, Judeo-Masonry is preparing for the Third World War. As the Depression of the 1930’s necessitated WWII, triggered for the US by the supposed treachery of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, so we see all the conditions created for another much worse Depression in the US, with the supposed treachery of Arabs last year against the Twin Towers in New York already igniting American public opinion to go to war against Afghanistan and now Iraq. And as we now in 2002 know with certainty that our governments and media told us far from the complete truth in 1941 as to who was truly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor, so we will eventually know that those truly responsible for the attack on the Twin Towers were certainly not those primarily held up as being responsible by our governments and media.

And who is responsible for those Twin Tower attacks? He doesn’t say explicitly, but in another audio clip posted on YouTube, Williamson describes the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as an inside job:

None of you believe that 9-11 is what it was presented to be. It was, of course, the two towers came down, but it was absolutely for certain not two airplanes which brought down those two towers. They were professionally demolished by a series of demolition charges from top to bottom of the towers. …

… [It’s] totally impossible that an airplane struck the Pentagon. A commercial airplane has a very soft nose. You don’t have a nose of titanium and steel. That’s not what an airplane can fly with. If you tried taking off with that, it would nosedive immediately as it lifted off the airport if it had such a heavy nose. The nose of a commercial aircraft is very soft. It’s just a little aluminum covering… the radar of the plane is usually up in the nose. The nose is very soft. Whatever hit the Pentagon punched its way though six of the ten eighteen-inch stone walls between outside the Pentagon and its inner courtyard. There are five rings of buildings, each with an outer and inner wall, and whatever went through the Pentagon went through six of the ten walls before it came to a stop. The photographic evidence is clear as clear can be. The newspapers, of course, did not publish those photographs, but they do exist. Then it can only have been a guided missile which struck the Pentagon.

Williamson’s newsletters are a treasure-trove of paranoia, nutty conspiracies and general all-around lunacy. Williamson argues that women should not wear trousers and that “almost no girl should go to any university” because doing so contributes to the “the unwomaning of woman.” He blames modernism for causing the Rwandan massacre, he describes pluralism as the major threat to the Faith and salvation of Catholics today, and he decries religious liberty as a substitute religion. He has even criticized the movie The Sound of Music because of how it portrays those “nasty Nazis” and elevates “self-centered” romantic love. His views on gay people, engaging in a sin “crying to Heaven for vengeance,” are all too predictable.

A Vatican spokesman tried to distance the Vatican from Williamson’s recently-publicized Holocaust revisionism. He said that the lifting of the excommunication “has nothing to do with the personal opinions of a person, which are open to criticism, but are not pertinent to this decree.”

Bishop Bernard Fellay, who now heads the separatist group founded by Lefebvre, the Society of Saint Pius X, refused to condemn Williamson’s anti-Semitic remarks to Swedish telebision. Instead he tried to shift the blame onto the Swedish interviewer for daring to ask “secular” questions:

“Although it had been understood that the interview would deal with religious issues only, the reporter asked the bishop’s opinion concerning historical matters … It is shameful to use an interview on religious matters to introduce secular and controversial issues with the obvious intention of misrepresenting and maligning the activity of our religious Society. Such [a] vile attempt will not reach its goal.”

Here is the video of Williamson’s remarks to Swedish television:

Click here to read a transcript of Williamson’s remarks to Swedish television

Sam Adams and the Double Standard: Part 2

There’s a lot of confusion over Portland Mayor Sam Adams’ tryst with Beau Breedlove, the intern who Adams admitted to having a sexual relationship with. It’s time to bust some of these myths.

Myth: Because Breedlove was an intern, Adams abused his position of authority when he entered into a sexual relationship with Breedlove.

Fact: Beau Breedlove was a legislative intern in Eugene, not a Portland city intern. They met when Breedlove was interning in the Oregon House for state Rep. Kim Thatcher (R-Keizer). Adams did not hold a position of professional authority over Breedlove.

Myth: Breedlove was just a 17-year-old boy.

Fact: According to Adams’ admission, Breedlove was an 18-year-old man when they initiated their sexual affair. At eighteen, Breedlove was old enough to sign contracts, join the army and go to war, and be tried as an adult for any crimes he might feel like committing.

Breedlove, because he is a legal, consenting adult, bears equal responsibility for the affair. What’s more, he appears to have an affinity for older men. Mark Merkle, 39, was Breedlove’s boyfriend for two years until last August.

This was a man, not a boy. Yet we have all sorts of people — gay and straight, Democratic and Republican — screaming for Mayor Adam’s resignation because he lied about having had perfectly legal sex with a perfectly legal consenting adult.

Hold that thought while we look at another set of myths swirling around another politician of note:

Myth: Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) admitted to have had perfectly illegal sex with a prostitute.

Fact: Oh, sorry. That was true. Vitter broke the law, but he didn’t admit to it until the statute of limitations had passed.

Myth: Sen. Vitter apologized to the Republican caucus in the Senate, and received a standing ovation.

Fact: Oh yeah. That part’s true also. Even though Vitter broke the law — something that Adams has apparently not done — he got a standing ovation.

But hey, Vitter’s admission of having engaged in an illegal sex act did come in at number five of Time magazine’s top ten awkward moments.

Let’s re-cap: Illegal sex? Awkward. Legal sex? Give him the heave-ho.

And what about the lying part?

Let’s cross the political aisle and consider Bill Clinton. After all, he lied under oath about a sexual encounter with an intern who really was his subordinate. But Clinton defenders said, well yeah, what do you expect? After all, his sex life is private, they said. He didn’t want his wife to find out, they said. He was protecting his daughter, they said. Who wouldn’t lie under those circumstances, they said. Besides, it was all a political witch hunt, they said.

That rallying cry that went “When Clinton lied, nobody died”? Gee, why don’t I see a similar call for perspective here among progressives?

Adams didn’t lie under oath. Instead, he told a very stupid lie about a very private matter that was none of anyone’s business while running for political office. Goodness! That’s never happened before!

So let’s re-cap again. Lies about gay sex with a consenting adult you have no authority over? Even liberals will call for your resignation. Lies about straight sex under oath with an intern you actually have authority over? You not only get to stay in office, but when your term finally reaches its natural conclusion, you get to enjoy the highest approval ratings of any president in history.

Nice presidential library you got there, Bill.

Hundreds of people have rallied in front of city hall to support their beleaguered mayor. Another rally is scheduled for Tuesday at noon.

Indianapolis Reporter Ignores Murder Victim’s Gender

This isn’t the first time this has happened. We got caught with a similar situation not too long ago when we were presented with a report on a murder in Syracuse. Initial reports from the press were extremely ambiguous about Lateisha Green’s gender, calling her “Moses ‘Teish’ Cannon,” rather than the name everyone knew her by. Because I couldn’t determine exactly how Teish presented herself to everyone, I reflected the ambiguity of those early reports. After all, I have known people who truly are gender ambiguous and who insisted on not having it any other way.  Nevertheless we were blasted for that ambiguity in the comments. But as the situation became more clear, we revised our reporting.

It was never our intention to stain Teish’s memory with an incorrect description of her gender. All we could do was rely in the reports that were presented to us. So imagine the offense we might have caused had we reported on a December murder in Indianapolis based on a WISH and WTHR reports which consistently referred to two murder victims, Michael Hunt, 22, and Avery Elzy, 34 as two men.

But this is Taysia Elzy, a transgender woman who was murdered along with her boyfriend.

Bil Browning and GLAAD were all over it. GLAAD contacted WTHR reporter Steve Jefferson and offered extensive resources for correcting the faulty coverage, including pointing out that the Associated Press style guide calls for reporters to “[u]se the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth. If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly.”

According to GLAAD, Jefferson didn’t like the advice:

Instead of taking our advice the reporter rebuffed our educational efforts saying in an email, “I did not do this story based on lifestyle.”  Jefferson furthered, “Our goal is to catch the killer- NOT promote your cause.” He also said he did not use female pronouns because he said the transgender victim “was NOT post-op.”

GLAAD included WTHR’s coverage as being among the worst in the nation for December, probably on the basis of Jefferson’s reaction.

Bil Browning’s reaction is perfect:

Actually, Steve, your job is to report the news. Your job is not to catch criminals, it’s to be an impartial, unbiased source of news and information without resorting to sensationalizing and disrespecting victims of a violent crime. This is why you are the worst journalist in the nation; you deserve the honor.

I’d go a little bit further. It is the reporter’s job not just to be impartial and unbiased, but also to report with clarity. Jefferson failed on all of these accounts.

WTHR’s coverage has just been updated toward a more ambiguous reporting. Her gender went from being incorrect to being unmentioned. It a small step in the right direction, but not far enough in my view. The revised reports are about as ambiguous as the first reports from Syracuse of Teish’s murder. WHTR hasn’t commented publicly on their reporter’s coverage.

Meanwhile, WISH’s reports have remained unchanged. They still describe the murder victims as “two men.”

Update: When I spoke to Bil Browning by phone earlier this afternoon, he told me about some new information that he would add to his post. That information is this:

I spoke with Carolyn Williams, the News Director for WTHR. The offensive article has been edited to conform with the AP Style Guide. Ms. Williams will also be speaking with her Station Manager about coordinating a diversity training session on LGBT issues with all area television stations.

Ms. Williams was very kind and understanding. E-mailing Ms. Williams with kudos for her prompt response and leadership would be more appropriate at this point!

Prognosis for LGBT Civil Rights Agenda

The Washington Blade has reported on a prognosis of Barack Obama’s LGBT Civil Rights Agenda. House and Senate figures believe that a Hate Crimes Bill could be on President Obama’s desk by this summer, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act could be ready for his signature by the fall.

The timetable for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is less certain. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) intends to introduce legislation for its repeal in the next few weeks, with many expecting it to be repealed sometime this year. However, Barney Frank recently suggested that its repeal may have to wait until U.S. troops are out of Iraq.

As for the rest of the civil rights agenda, things are much murkier. Granting Civil Union-like federal rights probably won’t happen this year, and lawmakers agree that the votes to repeal DOMA aren’t there.

Terror Watch Update

Al-Qaeda? Check. Hamas? Check. Taliban? Yep. Equality Maryland?

Equality Maryland?

The group was designated a “security threat” by the [Maryland State Police’s] Homeland Security and Intelligence Division, which also kept dossiers on dozens of activists and at least a dozen groups. Police kept files on Equality Maryland’s plans to hold rallies outside the State House in Annapolis to press for legislation reversing the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. Police plan to purge the files.

The files were revealed [Thursday] at a news conference, where a dozen Democratic lawmakers announced plans to introduce legislation to prevent future surveillance of nonviolent groups. Police would need “reasonable articulated suspicion of actual criminal activity” before they could conduct surveillance, the legislation’s sponsors said.

“Prayers For Bobby” Tonight, Focus Shifts Blame

As a programming reminder, “Prayers for Bobby” will premiere tonight on the Lifetime Channel at 9:00p.m. Eastern and Pacific, with encores scheduled on Jan. 25 at 8:00 p.m. and Jan. 27 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. The movie tells the true story of Bobby Griffith, who committed suicide after a four year struggle to reconcile his orientation with the pressures from his family to pray his gay away.

Bobby’s mother, Mary, had an interesting observation about her own mindset before Bobby’s death:

Q: Do you think Bobby’s story would have been different if he’d come out in today’s time?

A: No, unfortunately. My mind-set was completely tied up in the word of the gospel, and I couldn’t hear anything differently. It wouldn’t have made a difference whether this happened yesterday or several years ago. I couldn’t hear anything else.

…

Q. What advice would you give to parents who have just found out that their child is gay?

A. I’ve talked to many parents about this over the years. And I guess I’d just tell them to listen to their kids and to try not to push their opinions on them.

This is sage advice from someone who learned through a terrible tragedy the harm that can come when a parent doesn’t fully accept a son. Unfortunately, Focus On the Family refuses to listen to the voices of tragic experiences, and shifts the blame for what happened back onto Bobby’s parents:

Jeff Johnston, gender analyst at Focus on the Family, said the movie’s message runs contrary to God’s. “Parents can love their kids and still hold to what the Bible says about homosexuality and human sexuality,” he said.

It takes an awful lot of arrogance to pretend that this isn’t precisely what Mary was doing. Apparently Johnston and Focus On the Family are just that arrogant.

Haggard Faces More Sex Accusations; Church Says There Were Others Still Undisclosed

More skeletons have come tumbling out of Ted Haggard’s closet. This time, it’s fresh accusations coming from a male volunteer at Haggard’s New Life Church:

Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

Boyd said an “overwhelming pool of evidence” pointed to an “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” that “went on for a long period of time … it wasn’t a one-time act.” Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time. He said he was certain the man was of legal age when it began.

These accusations have surfaced just as HBO was preparing to air “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” on January 29. The documentary follows Ted Haggard in the aftermath of his fall from grace when Mike Jones, a Denver masseur, disclosed that he and Haggard had engaged in a sexual relationship.

According to the statement posted on the church’s web site suggesting that there are other credible allegations that the church knows about:

After Mr. Haggard’s fall, we received reports of a number of incidents of inappropriate behavior. In each case, we have tried our very best to do the right thing, including disciplinary action when appropriate. Our concern has been and continues to be for every person affected. We renew our invitation today for anyone who believes he or she has been hurt to please come forward.

In early 2007, New Life Church acknowledged that their investigation uncovered new evidence that Haggard engaged in “sordid conversation” and “improper relationships,” but they didn’t provide any details. A church board member earlier had denied that there was any evidence that Haggard was involved with anyone else. It now appears that there were several people involved.

According to the current pastor at New Life Church, a Colorado Springs TV station contacted him to say that the man was planning on going public with a detailed report on his relationship with Haggard. That contact has apparently triggered this latest disclosure by the pastor. He now acknowledges that the church had, in fact, entered into a settlement with the church volunteer at least two years ago.

The terms of that settlement include counseling and college tuition, but following the lead of how the Catholic church handled their clergy abuse scandals, this agreement also contains a clause requiring both parties to remain silent. Incredulously, pastor denies that the settlement amounted to hush money:

“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance — certainly not hush money. I know what’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

Boyd says now that that while it is within their legal rights to do so, they will not take any action against the man should he decide to go public.

Earlier this month, Haggard described his sexuality as one that doesn’t fit into “stereotypical boxes,” saying “I have struggled and continue to struggle from time to time with same sex attraction.” He also expressed support for same-sex marriage, although he reportedly retracted that statement within the hour according to an HBO spokesperson.

No Sex Please, We’re Gay

Jack Drescher, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. Dr. Drescher is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and presently serves as a Consultant to APA’s Committee on Public Affairs. He is past Chair of APA’s Committee on GLB Issues. Dr. Drescher is Author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man (The Analytic Press) and is Emeritus Editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health.

The city of Portland, Oregon is being rocked by a political sex scandal. This one has many of the familiar ingredients of the genre: a sexual relationship between a politician and an intern, a newspaper ferreting out the story, a lying elected official and an ineffective cover up an affair, calls to come clean, a belated admission of culpability, and a sense that the public trust has once again been betrayed.

In this case, the sex involves Portland’s newly elected Mayor Sam Adams and an eighteen-year-old male intern. And the scandal is stirring debate in Portland’s LGBT community, pitting those who believe the Mayor should be forgiven his transgressions and those clamoring for his resignation.

Gay people calling for a gay politician’s head for having sex? This seems a far cry from the attitudes that prevailed within the fledgling gay liberation movement that emerged after the 1969 Stonewall riots.  In the 1970s, gay liberation was seen as a metaphor for other forms of liberation:  third world countries were to be liberated from colonial oppression; African-Americans and other people of color were to be liberated from white oppression; women were to be liberated from male domination; gays and lesbians were to be freed from heterosexual oppression.

At the time, freedom from heterosexual oppression was also taken to mean opposing conventional, heterosexual beliefs about what constituted acceptable forms of sexuality.  Gay writers like John Rechy idealized and glamorized the sexual outlaws who sexually engaged with anonymous and multiple partners.  It was a time when calling someone “promiscuous” could reasonably be interpreted as envy of that person’s sexual prowess.

This early movement called for decriminalizing all consensual sexual activities between adults.  Some would even argue for legalizing sexual activities between adults and minors.  Sexual liberation meant there could be no bad sex as long as the sex was voluntary.

How times have changed.  Today, the LGBT civil rights movement has shifted its focus from a radical sexual liberation to more conservative issues, like the right to marry, the right to raise children, the right to serve in the military, and access to health care.  The Stonewall’s bottle-throwing drag queens could never have imagined that the movement they fired up would one day bring us Log Cabin Republicans or openly gay evangelical Christians.

How did this happen?  Among other reasons, the sexual outlaws of the 1970s did not envision the devastation of the AIDS epidemic that emerged in the 1980s.   And although the gay liberation movement did not bring about a radical rethinking of acceptable forms of open sexual expression among the heterosexual majority, it did create what might be called a gay consciousness in the general culture.  The generations who came after the sexual liberationists would shape their gay and lesbian identities to suit their own needs.

Thus it appears that while those early sexual transgressors may have paved the way for Mayor Adams to win his election as an openly gay man, the cost of mainstream acceptance has required giving up the more outre elements of sexual liberation.  He should not be surprised if the LGBT community does not support him.  Today, there are millions of kids being raised by gay and lesbian parents.  And just like straight parents, they don’t want politicians coming on to their kids.

NY’s New Senator Announced

Hillary Clinton is leaving her position as Senator from New York to serve as Secretary of State in the Obama administration and NY Governor Paterson has announced his choice to replace her. Kirsten Gillibrand, an upstate Representative, is a very unexpected choice.

Although we do not yet fully know Gillibrand or all of her positions, it’s clear that she is not a stereotypical Democrat. She’s described as a “fiscal hawk” and is a supporter of the Second Amendment. It appears that Gillibrand sits in the conservative wing of the Democratic Party.

But hers is an unusual stance. Generally, “conservative Democrat” is a label that often suggests social conservativatism, those who may be more hesitant to see gay constituents as fully deserving of equality.

Yet one of Gillibrand’s first actions after the announcement was to contact Empire State Pride and affirm her support for gay Americans.

“After talking to Kirsten Gillibrand, I am very happy to say that New York is poised to have its first U.S. Senator who supports marriage equality for same-sex couples,” said Van Capelle. “She also supports the full repeal of the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) law, repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) and passage of legislation outlawing discrimination against transgender people. While we had a productive discussion about a whole range of LGBT concerns, I was particularly happy to hear where she stands on these issues.”

It’s rare to find a politician who is fiscally conservative, favorable to gun rights, and fully supportive of equality for gay citizens. And I couldn’t be more pleased.