A Christian Pastor Explores Homosexuality April 21, 2009

A Christian Pastor Explores Homosexuality

By Guest Contributor
April 21, 2009

Paul Rudnick has a great piece in the latest issue of The New Yorker where he writes (a fiction piece) about a Christian pastor who is a closeted homosexual.

It mentions Ted Haggard a few times, and no doubt the story is a satire of what went through Haggard’s mind the past few decades.

I’ll be honest; I was curious. I needed to know exactly what sexual activity with another fellow might entail, so I could be ashamed of it. I warned Brad that, while I would be willing to sleep with him as a very small part of my journey to Christian wholeness, I didn’t intend to enjoy the experience. In fact, while we were going at it, I said, “Brad, while what you’re doing feels unbelievably good and just might cause my entire body to explode, it’s nothing compared with what I hope to one day experience with my future wife, if she’s double-jointed.”

But I knew that what Brad and I were doing was wrong, especially after the fifty-eighth time…

(via The New Yorker)

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  • Harknights

    This reminds me of what a gay basher thinks when he is hitting a homosexual.

    I hate you.
    I hate you.

    because I find you
    so attractive.

    I really believe that the more someone hates teh gayz the more likely they are gay and just don’t want to admit it.

  • WayBeyondSoccerMom

    Speaking of Haggard, I am sad to report he is coming to my town, Charlotte, NC, compliments of a local church that has invited him and his wife to speak. Ugh.

    http://www.charlotteobserver.com/faith/story/674555.html

    Ted Haggard, the one-time national evangelical leader exiled by his Colorado church after paying a male prostitute for sex and drugs, will be the featured guest next Sunday – along with his wife Gayle – at Charlotte’s Elevation Church.

    Elevation, which packs thousands of young evangelicals into high school auditoriums and uptown’s Spirit Square every Sunday, broke the news about Haggard on Sunday with words from Pastor Steven Furtick.

    “We’re not glamorizing or glorifying anyone’s sin or deception nor are we promoting an agenda,” Furtick told his flock at Spirit Square’s McGlohon Theatre. “We’re allowing the story of Jesus to be told through a man who lost it all and his wife who stood by him.”

    And, my favorite bit:

    Asked this year by CBS News if he was gay, Haggard said this: “No. Actually, it’s complicated. And what I’ve – what I’ve determined is, through all two years now of counseling, is that I just don’t fit in the boxes. People want you either to be heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, whatever. And my counselor says I’m a heterosexual with complications, whatever that means.”

    Yes, folks, Haggard is a “heterosexual with complications.

  • Larry Huffman

    While I agree that hatred of homosexuals stirs from some deeply latent area…where attraction and arousal all seem to betray the subject to the point that they move with violence to squelch the feelings…I do not believe it means they are really gay.

    There is a difference, really. Just like I would not consider any man who has ever had sexual encounters with another man to be gay, simply because of that one encounter. Being homosexual means more than just a sexual element…there is desire and attraction at levels other than the physical.

    And…what I do not like about accepting this premise is that if the violent anti-gay people are all actually gay…that says something bad about gay people. It says that gay people who cannot rationalize their homosexuality resort to terrible violence against their own kind. That is just not how it is.

    I believe, personally, that these people who express things violently, have felt stirrings…urges…nothing more. The kinds of arousal all people may experience when presented with certain sexual situations. It does not necessarily mean that they are gay…they were just responding to something sexual whether it be thought or something witnessed. That stirring…as slight and biologically explainable as it might be, can in turn make the person fear that he is homosexual…and then he lashes out to prove otherwise (largely because of the views, taboos and fears that religion has given them on the subject).

    But again…I am not willing to say that people who are violently anti-gay are all really gay themselves. Maybe confused or fearful that they are…but not actually gay.

    Just an opinion I have formed after hearing for years that people who bash gays are really gay themselves. (Though…there may be cases where that is exactly the case…I am speaking in general terms).

  • Erik

    WayBeyondSoccerMom, I hope you’re a member of Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics!

    http://charlotteatheists.com/

  • Perhaps gay bashers are bi

    Perhaps its all shades of gray…

  • Tommy C

    Hemant: no doubt the story is a satire

    Indeed, Shouts and Murmurs is always a humor piece. 😉