I’m afraid it’s not very compassionate of me, but I just have no sympathy for the Ted Haggards of the world. If he’d just wanted to be a self-loathing closet case I might feel bad, but he wasn’t content to do that: he had to get up on a podium behind a microphone and slam others for doing “sordid things” that he did (or at very least sure as hell wanted to do) himself.
BTW, would Haggard have been able to fly under anybody’s gaydar? The man has HOMO written so large on his forehead he could have borrowed the first two letters and one of the O’s from the woody in the HOLLYWOOD sign. The only thing remotely straight about him is that he reminds me a little of the weird little cooking school dean who was always drooling over the fact Jack lived with two girls on THREE’S COMPANY.
And gay or straight, if you’re caught in a sex scandal and you know damned good and well that the accusations are true, DON’T DENY IT! Just as Stop, Drop and Roll is the SDR if you’re on fire, the SDR to remember for exposed sex scandals is ‘Stall, Deduce and Repent [vaguely]’
Stall: neither confirm nor deny but give nothing at first beyond a “no comment at this time”
Deduce: Figure out what they know, who they know it from and how much do they know
Repent: Come forward in a press conference (tears would be good) that you’ve had some indiscretions or misdeeds that you need to address and you apologize for all involved. As they’re of an intensely personal nature you don’t wish to discuss them and plead with the media to please respect your privacy and that of your family (as well as those of the scout troop and dog breeders involved) and retire til it blows over.
Bakker, Haggard, Paulk, Clinton- all of them totally botched this simple always-effective rule. People will forgive an adulterer far sooner than they will an adulterer who lies when caught with his pants down. (Clinton I’ll never understand- you’d think he would have known better how to capitalize on the public’s dislike of Ken Starr and ‘who gives a damn?’ attitude most people had towards consentual adultery of a famous person.)
Yeah, I was shocked by Clinton’s “I DID NOT HAVE SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH THAT WOMAN” speech. If he had gone on TV and said, “I’m being accused of all kinds of things, but I want everyone to know that while I’ve made some mistakes this is a private matter and I’m not going to discuss it in public, and Ken Starr is an asshole,” I honestly think the Republicans never would have got the courage to try to impeach him. It was the obvious angry lies that emboldened them. I expected Clinton to be smarter than that. Vaugeness, vaugeness, vaugeness–you should know that vaugeness is your ally, Bill! Sure, deny, of course deny. But deny in a VAUGE way…“while I’m not a perfect man, many of these rumors are completely untrue. But this scandal has made me realize how much the love of my wife and family have sustained me…”
C’mon Bill, you can do this kind of thing in your sleep!
Nope, nothing gay about those Thomas Blackshear paintings. Why, he makes Jesus look postively BUTCH. Everyone is so masculine that there couldn’t possibly be anything gay about it.
Uh, excuse me, but how is that not gay? I mean, you see an ad for a job in the paper, the description’s kind of vague, but the salary, benefits, and travel possibilities listed are awesome, so you decide to check it out. When you ask the interviewer what the job is, they respond with, “Pecker checker. We need you to follow around our preacher and make sure he doesn’t get caught with a mouthful of cock again.” What straight man is going to say, “I can start today!”???
I’d do it only so that I could catch him with a mouthful of cock and load pictures of it up on to the intarwebs, but I’m weird like that.
This could actually be a blessing in disguise for the gay community. If in a few months if he goes “back” to being gay, it will just reinforce what eveyone knows; Gay is not a choice. Hell maybe he will even realise it and come out as an advocate!
A gay friend of mine claims to have a mild fetish for desperately straight-acting men who refuse to come out of the closet. He says that’s high on his list of “types,” and they make him “hot.” I have no idea if his preferences are common (or if, perhaps, this is an oblique way of flirting with me, which he’s done before), but I’d bet there’s at least a small percentage of the gay community who’d leap at the chance to try to draw out Mr. Haggard a second time, whether or not entrapment and public humiliation are the ultimate motivation. Should we start soliciting volunteers?
I don’t know that it’s common but I’ve known a couple of guys who had the same fetish. Both claim (I know I know- anecdotal, not rep. sample, etc.) that a gay guy will never have a more passionate “willing to do anything” partner than a heavily closeted guy because they have to make every second count before they’re off to soccer practice and confession.