Republican Secrets and Lies

Today’s news cycle refocuses the omniverous media spotlight (finally!) on a much more welcome conversation as the election nears: self-loathing gay Republicans caught with their lying, hypocritical pants down. They’re the new Starbucks; there’s one on every corner! Maybe Ted Haggard and Mark Foley will meet in rehab and make a love connection.

Now your typical man-on-the-street, workaday self-loathing gay Republican – this guy/gal I feel sorry for. Throughout history, society hasn’t exactly thrown out the welcome mat for same-sexers. I’m 44, and when I was a kid in middle America in the late 60s/early 70s, I had a funny walk. Apparently, I walked too much on my toes for my Dad’s comfort. He impressed upon me that my walk made me come off effeminate, and that not only was that Bad, it was unacceptable. Being the obstinate prick I am, I never learned a more manly walk to perform for my Dad’s benefit; instead I suffered his withering witticisms which consisted mostly of him referring to me by girls’ names, or sissy-sounding boys names.

Friends, meet Alouicious Bastardson.

My point being, realizing you’re gay is no picnic still, even in today’s relatively enlightened society. And it sucks even more if that discovery comes at a time when you’re growing up in a home/social environment that teaches that your kind is wicked and evil. And mostly right there you have your recipe for your self-hating gay, of any political persuasion.

I always remember the quote attributed to black former congressman J.C. Watts’ father, “Being black and voting Republican is like being a chicken and voting for Col. Sanders.” You could sure say the same thing about being gay, especially now that the Evangelical Right has highjacked the social agenda of the Republican party.

And that’s where Mega-Minister to the television masses Ted Haggard comes in. It’s one thing to hate yourself and do devious, sick things to sabotage any chance of real happiness you could have in this life. It’s another thing altogether to abuse a position of power to actively agitate, endorse and promote a poltical/social/religious agenda that restricts the civil rights of other people in your same situation.

That’s what’s sick, not being gay.

The fact that even this early on Haggard has admitted to “some indiscretions” suggests to me that Mr. Haggard knows there is a smoking blue dress somewhere. Probably photos or videos. These TV preachers are peacocks and love to worship at the altar of their own reflection. This just in – it’s voice mail recordings! I’ll lay odds there are pictures, too.

It has to make you wonder how many more of these picture-perfect WASP motherfuckers running megachurches are protecting secret sexual second lives, while they scare their megaflocks with horror stories about ‘the homosexual agenda.’ They know better than anyone the ‘homosexual agenda’ doesn’t extend any further than “Say, don’t you think the couch would look better over there in the corner…?”

My Mom goes to one of those churches, and her pastor is always racing off to Africa to ‘build a church,’ and do some ministering to the disenfranchised, voiceless victims-in-waiting so abundant over there. Hmmm….

Every time I hear one of these right-wing, politically-active TV preachers sounding off on the news now (and there’s lots of them since this story broke), I look up at him and wonder, “Hmmm… I wonder what his secret is?”

Don’t you?