Haggard Update

When I saw this last night about Ted Haggard wanting to become an psychologist online, I laughed and decided to save it for TWIP this weekend. But then I saw this on the Denver Post, and couldn't wait. According to one of his "overseers":

"He is completely heterosexual," Ralph said. "That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing."

Uh, yeah, whatever. If anyone needs an explanation as to why a guy who hires a male prostitute for three years is not completely heterosexual, check out this post at Good As You.

There's just so much to this, I don't know what to say. Here we have a 50-year-old gay man, who by any account from anyone credible, is stuck in an unsatisfying relationship with his wife and, until recently, completely cut off from the outside world (why does this sound like a cult?), a (presumably) straight woman who's married to this guy, who has remained silent on this issue and will remain married to him, at least in the near future, and four kids who have to move around a whole lot now because no one will acknowledge the truth about this whole thing. There are other characters, like the team of fundamentalists who are trying to manage this "crisis" and push their politics at the same time so they can keep pushing the "gays can change" narrative, his congregation who lost their pastor but support him and hope he ex-gays himself for his own sake, the GLBT community and allies, who, while we make fun of this whole drama, would really like for him to come out and live his life honestly for both his sake and because of the personal political stakes, and the heterosexual population at large who's just shaking their heads wondering what's happened or just waiting for the next juicy piece of gossip but otherwise don't care about how this works itself out.

Isn't this a crazy drama?

When exposed, Mark Foley came out through his attorney while in rehab, Jim West denied it until he died, and James McGreevey embraced the GLBT community. Haggard, an anti-gay authority figure who was also outed through scandal, has "ex-gayed" and decided to stay in the closet and not speak about his sexuality publicly, only through spokesmen. While those of us not in positions of authority have developed a set of coming out rituals, these people, so far removed from out-n-proud GLBT people, through their own choice, cannot respectably come out.

As much as his "overseers" want to claim him for the anti-gay community, he is one of the most publicly visible queer people in the country. For better or worse, he is, in a small, nuanced way, representing us.

Pastor Ted talks about his sex life

Pelosi's daughter has a documentary that will show on HBO, and Pastor Ted's in it. Here's a bit from ABC News:

In the film, he proclaims that evangelicals have the best sex lives in the world. "You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group," he says. In the documentary, Haggard asks an evangelical next to him how often he has sex with his wife. The man replies, "Every day." Haggard then explains that evangelicals have a lot of love and says to Pelosi, "You don't think these babies come out of nowhere?"

Ew, ew, ew, ew.

And that's the mature response.

At least he's showing he paid attention in Conservative Statistics 101: "You know all the surveys say...." Yes, a vague reference to all the surveys. Touche, Mr. Haggard, touche. Although someone told me that you needed crystal meth to have sex with your wife.

UPDATE: Speaking of Evangelicals and statistics, Christianity Today has a great article up about just that. And no one can say the author's anti-Christian: He's a youth minister named Christian who writes for Christianity Today.

Closets are for political failures!

An interesting article on Raw Story says that Democrats in New York looking for a replacement for the state Comptroller are worried that one of the possibilities is a closet case.

The column from the Post, a daily newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, continues, "'Though they would appoint an openly gay candidate, they worry about someone in the closet,' one Dem told Page Six. "After the Hevesi fiasco, they want honesty, and worry about the pressures involved for a statewide official to remain in the closet."

This is a turn-around from the normal position of wanting gay politicians to be open closet cases. The way one expresses his or her sexuality being used as a job (dis)qualification can't be good, but at least it's based on the idea that sexuality is not willfully mutable. Of course, the logical extension of that is full equality, so maybe these Democrats will be something to watch this year.

Qomics for Queers

While in the 70's, 80's, and 90's television has been catching up with the reality that GLBT people actually exist, film about queers has been around for a century, and theater and literature with prominant gay characters has been around since who knows when, the comics have pretty much ignored the fact that gays exist at all. The only ones we know have that have mentioned gays are Mallard Fillmore saying how homophobia is A-O-K, Doonesbury's liberal/conservative talk-radio couple, and that one old boss of Elizabeth on For Better or For Worse. For a medium of this size, one would expect more.

So, like a good little gay boy, I turn those expectations into innuendo in the weekly feature Qomics for Queers. I'll do my best to read between the lines, reinterpret artwork, and completely make shit up about the past week's comics in order to feel like we're represented in this medium.

This week is all about Beetle Bailey. The first one is from Wednesday:

I've been following the gayness of Camp Swampy for the past month. (Click on "BEETLE BAILEY" on the topics list below to catch up.) What we see here is that the only person in Camp Swampy in whom Beetle can confide his feelings for Sarge is the only civilian who works there. She, being a modern, young career woman, is completely supportive, but also confused. Like, he's 20 years older than Beetle, is a whole lot heavier, is losing his hair, and isn't particularly nice to Beetle. Like a devoted and delusional lover, Beetle defends his affection pretty poorly.

Then again, he's probably not completely out and doesn't think that there's anyone else out there for him. The only way to make a joke out of that kind of sadness is some good old punctuation-mark-and-squiggly-line swearing.

From Thursday:

Well, he's singing a song in which he calls himself "divine". Notice that Beetle pulled right up next to him in the circle around the campfire. I don't think that the army goes camping like this anymore, but it's better to think of the army like that than to think about all those dead Iraqis. And to show that this is a little more than one man's conjecture and is more like two men's conjecture, The Comics Curmudgeon also picked up on it.

And then Friday:

I mean, why not just have a bareback orgy right in the middle of the showers for the whole world to watch? Let's see here, we know from Killer's comment that Sarge spends a long time in the shower. Like a really long time in the shower. I can't think of any other explanation than that Sarge is waiting in the showers to check out other guys. Sure, Beetle's a good little sport and covers for him, but he knows that the only reason Sarge would hang out in a nudey zone for what would have had to have been over half an hour would be to get his jollies.

Beetle, not to be outdone, is sporting the towel around the neck. Fun for the local bathhouse, but he's letting it all hang out in the army. I watched Philadelphia, Beetle! I know what they do to your type in the military!

CABINET MEMBER LOVES LICKING CARPET

Well, not quite. A pretty uninteresting exchange between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and California Senator Barbara Boxer got blown out of proportion. Really no big deal considering they were discussing something important and the GOP wants to distract people from what's really going on. Feministing has the play-by-play.

John Aravosis has some even better analysis: Condi is a lesbian. Here's the heart of the argument:

I think they freaked out because for years there have been rumors - unsubstantiated from what I know - about Condi's true sexual orientation. She doesn't appear to date men. She's around 52 years old and has never been married. Her life's dream is to become the commissioner of the National Football League. And she had a very strange exchange on FOX News a few years back in which one of the FOX hosts seemed to be trying to set Condi up on a date with a female anchor at FOX (true story).

The best part of politics is speculating on the sexual orientation of public officials.

Would he please just come out already?

Sarge just keeps on getting closer and closer to the day he announces to the whole world that he's a big mary.

Yes, Killer, Sarge's love life depends on "meat" and "potatoes". Since that would be too subtle even for me, I'll rephrase: he needs "penis" and "testicles". It's a little immature to refer to male genetalia in that way, but Beetle Bailey is not known for maturity.

While you may be thinking that that's a bit of a stretch to interpret the comic that way, at least we find out that Sarge requires food as a bribe to spend any time at all with his "girlfriend".

Of course, this wasn't enough to justify a post until I saw today's Beetle Bailey.

'Nuf said.

Sarge is coming out

We always knew that the day would come when the mainstream comics would have to recognize the fact that gays exist (outside of that one lame gay guy who was Elizabeth's old boss on For Better or For Worse), but we really didn't think that it would happen with Beetle Bailey calling out Don't Ask/Don't Tell. Here's yesterday's installment:


Sarge has a dream about a topless "buff" Beetle, and then is nice to him all day, looking at him nervously from afar, as the solitary sweat drop tells us, but also confused by how strong his feelings are, as upwards pointing eyebrows tell us.

Mm-hmm, we know the feeling.

We would have let it go, if the very next day, this didn't happen:


Yes, Sarge, nervously stack those papers while avoiding the marriage question from your beard.

Oh, we hope that tomorrow Sarge starts to come out. That, of course, would make his constant violence towards Beetle far less funny.

Justin Lookadoo, here's looking at you!

After seeing that the New Life Church's leadership proves that Protestant clergy is just as gay as Catholic, we find out that gayness among Evangelicals gets even funnier. Ex-Gay Watch warns us about some nefarious plan for Exodus International to recruit Christian kids for gay bashing, and upon following the link, we find a montage of face pics more gay than any we've seen on DList. Check it out here.

We're interested in this Justin Lookadoo, motivational speaker and author of like 100 books about teen dating. Do visit his page. We learned a lot of things there, like:

• He's from El Paso, and he considers living in Mexico his "coolest experience"
  
  
• He has "closet friends", either friends who are in the closet or from when he was in the closet
  
  
• Two of his favorite singers are totally gay
  
  
• He has make-up tips for girls, and calls Cristina Aguilera "trasky"... Cat fight!
  
  
• He faces the day ass-first
  
  
• He has a "he male strut which works on the women", he wants to be one of the Village People, he's riding an imaginary bull and slapping it's ass.... God, we can't point out the gay subtext and make it funny when it's a gay super-text. Come out already!