Closeted Gay Preachers

[Jack Scribe]

A friend forwarded to me a very thoughtful article. An openly-gay pastor analyzes the problems of two closeted fundamentalists being outed.

 

Preachers found logic in denial

 

Article Last Updated:12/16/2006 11:29:00 PM MST - Denver Post

 

The Rev. Paul Barnes and the Rev. Ted Haggard have asked their legions of devout followers to pray for them. The preachers have admitted to homosexual behavior, something that for years they railed quite lucratively against by calling it a sin and an abomination.

 

"I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy. ... I can't tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away," Barnes said in a videotaped statement to the Grace Chapel congregation in Douglas County last week.

 

"There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," Haggard wrote in a letter to the 14,000 members of his New Life Church in Colorado Springs last month.

 

In the wake of their reluctant public confessions, the impulse to ridicule these guys as venal hypocrites is irresistible.

 

In fact, Haggard's massage buddy, Mike Jones, and his publisher already are taking that impulse to the bank.

 

But as with former Rep. Mark Foley, who sponsored legislation to crack down on child predators on the Internet while he allegedly was sending salacious e-mails to Capitol Hill pages, there's more to the story of the outright duplicity of the pious ministers than just lurid material for book deals.

 

What we have here, according to the Rev. Kevin Maly, the openly gay pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Denver, is a rare opportunity to see how some people try to cope with being gay and how they hurt so many people along the way.

 

He calls it "a teachable moment."

 

Homosexual ministers preaching that homosexuality is evil is not evidence of their rank opportunism or some kind of vacuous self-loathing, he said.

 

It's a desperate attempt at self-control.

 

"It really is a gestalt," he said.

 

"One of the functions of human language is regulation and control. There are people - and it may not be conscious for them - who are trying to control something within themselves by speaking out against it."

 

Ultimately, despite heterosexual marriages and preaching the message that homosexuality is wrong, they lost control.

 

"Sexuality is irrepressible," Maly said. No amount of denial or pretending can change things.

 

Sure, these guys were living a lie, but in their tortured psyches, becoming prominent anti-gay preachers made perfect sense.

 

It was a way to remind themselves not to act gay.

 

While evangelicals may differ about whether being a homosexual is a choice or a biological imperative, they generally subscribe to the belief that it's homosexual acts that are evil.

 

So the solution is to act straight and to condemn those who don't.

 

It's also no surprise to Maly that Haggard and Barnes chose the religious life instead of, say, law or business. Churches are safe havens for the exiled, he said, at least theoretically.

 

"Religious traditions are at their best when they are about bringing in those who have been shoved to the edges of society," he said.

 

All that implies that churches are inherently compassionate, welcoming places.

 

So it seems like two beloved evangelical leaders coming out of the closet would be such a dramatic turning point that reconsideration of the whole abomination thing logically would follow.

 

"One could only hope," Maly said.

 

He's not optimistic.

 

"If you look at the language used by Haggard and Barnes, they still view their same-sex attractions as evil," he said. "There's still this mistaken belief that one can change his sexuality if only one prays hard enough. I think what both of these guys are saying is, 'We were right all along, we just didn't believe hard enough."'

 

So the teachable moment may be lost, at least on the evangelical community. Because while the two preachers have admitted to homosexual behavior, they're still dissembling as fast as they can.

 

They still can't embrace who they are.

 

Jack