Well, one of the things that homophobic people do is misrepresent what gay people are and what they do. In a thread about a preacher who had a a pulpit, a 25,000-member congregation and media access to possibly do such, I thought it was important to point out, even he’s not homophobic himself, that Dio was possibly flippantly doing the same thing himself.
I responded after deleting because I thought Bosstone’s post had a valid but answerable point.
Me, too. I’m sicked and tired of this shit, if it’s true.
Doesn’t matter. Even if they have dick-in-mouth video, he’ll still deny he’s really gay, and blame it on some temporary tempation or booze or something, then he’ll go get “rehabbed” like Ted Haggard did. I think it’s very difficult for these guys to admit even to themselves that they’re gay.
It’s not “you are straight and therefore not evil,” it’s “you are not evil and therefore straight,” at least in their minds. “I can’t be gay, homosexuals are against God, and I love God!”
“Defendant Long has a pattern and practice of singling out a select group of young male church members and using his authority as Bishop over them to ultimately bring them to a point of engaging in a sexual relationship,” the suits allege.
I’m not talking about degrees of truth. A statement like that is either true or not true. And we don’t have the data, despite what **DtC **posted, to say that it’s true.
If you want to talk about the likelihood of it being true, that would be a different matter. I can see it as one very possible explanation, and wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. But since we don’t know, and probably can’t know, confirmation bias is the most parsimonious explanation.
Actually, that’s their ages now. According to this story, they were 17 and 18 at the time the alleged incidents began, and in this story their lawyer says they were 16 when the contact started.
Still not pedophilia, of course, and, as the lawyer herself observes, not even a violation of Georgia’s age-of-consent laws, which require only that participants be 16 or older, both for straight sex and gay sex.
Given all that, i wonder what exactly the legal problem is here? If the allegations of sexual contact are true (it will require a lot more evidence to convince me), i wonder exactly what legal trouble the pastor could be in? The articles talk about “coercion,” but unless he actually physically assaulted them, i don’t know that verbal coercion and manipulation deserve any legal sanction.
Furthermore, according to one of the articles i linked above, Long “coerced them into having sex with him in exchange for lavish trips, cars and cash.” If you convince me to do something that i’m otherwise reluctant to do, in exchange for cars and cash, why is that a crime? I guess if the action is sex, it could be considered prostitution.
Of course, Long’s biggest problem, if the allegations of sexual contact turn out to be true, are probably not going to be legal anyway. The biggest repercussions will be to his career as a wealthy and influential minister.
I went back and read a couple of sources and did some searches and it clearly appears that no underaged sexual context was involved (GA age of consent: 16). Whether that says Long was extremely careful about making sure of that (he took Robinson to New Zealand for his 18th birthday) and was possibly engaged in grooming those young males beforehand remains to be seen, as well as the truth of the allegations by Flagg and Robinson.
Flagg moved into a home owned by another New Birth pastor when he was a high school junior, according to the suit, where Long would sometimes share a bed with him.
Again, maybe I’m reading between the lines here but…
Exactly. Flagg and Robinson describe graphic sexual interactions and if any such more damaging evidence existed which occurred when Flagg was a high school junior, he certainly wouldn’t have stopped at describing it as “shared a bed,” although that damning enough if true.
The big clue is that they think being gay is a choice, and you can pray away the gay. I am very sure I NEVER chose to be straight, and don’t really see that any amount of prayer could cure it.
And yet the lawyer for the two men says that the activity didn’t start until they were 16. If the pastor had been jumping on them when they were under the age of consent, don’t you think that would form a significant aspect of the lawsuit?
Despite the fulminating by religious and anti-sex nutjobs, 16 is the age of consent in about 60 percent of all US States.
Only 8 states have 18 as the universal age of consent (including, i was surprised to discover, California). In some other states it’s 17, and some states have differential age of consent laws based on the difference in age between the two participants.
It’s worth remembering, though, that age of consent for sex is a separate law from things like pornography laws. There was a case in Indiana a few years back where a guy was convicted of child exploitation and child pornography for taking nude images of a 17-year-old. Under Indiana’s age-of-consent laws, he could have fucked her, but taking her nude picture was a crime.