Mike Jones is the former male escort and personal trainer who exposed Ted Haggard‘s hypocrisy years ago. He did an interview for this site a while back.
Last week, another pastor, Kevin J. Gray, was found to have embezzled over $1,000,000 from his church to pay for, among other things, male prostitutes.
Jones wrote a piece for The Daily Beast where he answers the question of Why Priests Hire Male Prostitutes:
During the 1990s, when I worked as an escort in Denver, Colorado, I estimate at least 15 percent of my clientele were clergy or connected with the church in some way. There were one-timers and there were guys who came back again and again and again, and they were all the same: positively giddy when the encounter began, unable to look you in the eye as they left. The excitement that initially animated them was wholly overshadowed by the despondency and guilt that would overcome them as soon as it was over.
I can’t imagine the guilt they were feeling. Not only were they having sex with another man –- a sin punishable by God, in their minds — but I believe many of them were doing exactly what Father Gray did: stealing from their own churches. Maybe not a million bucks, maybe not even so much that anyone would notice. But more than once I was paid for my services with a handful of crinkled ones and fives. I would think to myself, how could they take from their own church’s collection plate? The answer is simple and sad: addicts will do whatever they need to do to support their habit.
You have to wonder how many pastors are still doing this but haven’t been caught yet…
(Thanks to Joe for the link!)
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