To me, the fact that he kept going to the same male prostitute over the course of several years implies he was looking for more than just something to fuck. If he was truly indifferent about where he stuck his willy, to the extent that the gender of the other person didn’t even matter, I’d expect him to have slept with a wide variety of male prostitutes, and not make any special effort to keep going back to the same guy. Of course, sleeping with just the one prostitute dramatically cut down on his chances of being outted, but if he’s got enough self-control to only sleep with one male prostitute, he’s got enough self-control to only sleep with female prostitutes. Unless he’s gay, in which case sleeping with women is never going to give him the sort of emotional/sexual satisfaction he needs, so he was “forced” to seek out a male prostitute, because no other kind of sexual encounter was going to be fulfilling.
Me, I’m a bit confused. I mean, I think it’s ethically right to accept people as who they are, and to grant forgiveness on confession of sin against others – but I missed the part where the latter was a part of the Infamous Homosexual Agenda. I thought it was* the other guys* who claimed to espouse that idea.
I’m saying some people have uncontrollable urges to stick their dicks in anything they can get their hands on. Men, women, chickens, jars full of flies, you name it. An opportunity to fuck something, anything, presents itself, and they take it. And maybe he kept going back because of the drugs, or because it does make sense to keep the number of people you’re fucking to a minimum.
Wait, there are things you don’t know about him and his sex life? Well, I certainly never have guessed that from the way you talk about it so authoritatively. Maybe he did have women prostitutes as well. What I’m saying is that we don’t know. You also say here that you don’t know, but then you talk like you do know.
Guys who go to male prostitutes.
Does it really matter if he’s gay or not? He was expelled because he engaged in the horrific crime of man-on-man sex. My understanding is even if he was gay and admitted it, so long as he abstained or lived a hetero lifestyle, there would be no problem for him with his followers.
Even if this is true, what does it matter? The idea that Haggard might be so uncontrollably horny that he doesn’t care what gender he’s boinging doesn’t really change anything.
I think where you and whoever that other person barking at me are going off-track is that you’re taking a completely irrational act and trying to apply rational thought to it. It’s irrational! If he were rational he wouldn’t be doing any of these things. If an alcoholic were rational they wouldn’t drink. But they’re irrational, and the more you try to figure out why they do what they do the more frustrated you are going to be.
Look, I’m not saying the guy is stone cold straight. I’m saying we don’t know. We don’t know if this was the only person he was fucking. I’d bet my mortgage money that it wasn’t. What if he has four regular prostitutes, three women and one guy? What then? Is he gay? All I’m saying is we don’t know, and it is not fair to gay people to automatically label the guy as gay. That will just reinforce the mistaken notion that many people have that all gays are sex-addled maniacs. They’ll use it as evidence that all gay people are moral degenerate drug using perverts. “Look at what the gay lifestyle did to poor Reverend Haggard.” All the more reason to marginalize it.
It matters because people like my parents will use this as just one more piece of evidence that all gay people are degenerate perverts who lie and use drugs. And he may not even be gay.
But if he has one of these “irresistable urges” to fuck anything that moves, then it doesn’t matter how much sense it makes to keep the number of people you’re fucking to a minimum. Any time any piece of ass walked past him, he’d go for it. If Haggard really is driven by some sort of monomaniacal obsession with sex with absolutely no regard for something as basic as the gender of the other person, then practically by definition, he’s not going to be able to restrict it to just the one giggolo. If he’s that promiscuous, he’s going to be screwing guys left and right, and he won’t need to keep going back to the same guy for sex. Let alone drugs: it’s not like it’s hard to score crystal meth these days, particularly if you spend a lot of time with prostitutes or in gay clubs.
You’re kidding here, right? “Guy sleeps with male prostitute = gay” is somehow a less sweeping assumption about this guy’s sex life than “Guy sleeps with male prostitute = guy will sleep with absolutely anything, male or female, human or animal, biological lifeform or inanimate object?”
And what sort of guy goes to a male prostitute? My money is on “gay guys.”
Honestly, is this really a debatable issue? I can understand looking at this story and saying, “Let’s hold on for a moment here, we don’t know that he actually slept with the male prostitute.” But if you’re arguing that yes, he really did pay another man for sex, then the dude is gay. Maybe he’s bisexual instead of homosexual (which still makes him gay, btw) but there’s really no way to reasonably argue that he’s not sexually attracted to men. Paying another guy for sex is about as much proof as you could ever possibly want that a given man is gay.
Good. you have defined a term. How about a cite for “[guys who go to male prostitutes] are just so compulsive they’ll put their dick in anything and everything they can.”
If it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. If a man is screwing another man, then it’s a safe bet that he’s gay or a least bisexual. The only way we’d know for sure is if Haggard said so, but I don’t know we could take his word for it at this point. He’d probably blame his behavior on demons.
Straight men have dallied with female prostitutes for centuries, so there’s nothing exceptional about a gay man doing the same with a male hooker. Yes, a bigot will probably see Haggard’s debauchery as proof that the gays are depraved. But I seriously doubt the “we don’t know if Haggard is really gay” argument would stop them from making those connections. How many straight men do you know pay money to have sex with men? The possibility of such a thing defies the black/white worldview that bigots cling to.
That other person who is barking at you is the OP, I’ll have you know. So there!
FYI, actual gay experts in this very thread call him gay. Just so you’ll know.
The only way this act is irrational is if you assume that, despite not being attracted to men in any way, Haggard spent three years paying another man for sex.
Yes. If you’re sexually attracted to members of your own gender, you’re gay. It’s not really a complicated concept.
No, pointing out that Haggard is gay is not unfair to gay people (which I’m sure will come as a relief to all the gay posters in this thread who have called Haggard gay.) Assuming that because Haggard is a cheating, lying, gay hypocrite means that all gays are cheating, lying hypocrites is what’s unfair. For that matter, pretending that someone a dude isn’t gay when he meets all the major requirments for being gay (which are, in their entirety, "Like to fuck other dudes) would also be unfair. It might be good PR to limit the definition of “gay” to respectable homos only, but it would be intellectually dishonest. And pretty damned unconvincing, to boot.
Okay, so next time you’re talking with your parents, bring up Haggard. When they say that he’s an example of how disgraceful homosexuals are, you try and explain to them how patronizing a male prostitute doesn’t necessarily make one gay. See how far you get with that argument.
Definition strikes me as a bit simplistic. What about prison rapists who “fuck” other guys more as an act of sadism and dominance than anything sexual. Are they gay? Is it “more” gay to be an “active” participant than a “passive” participant.
I’m reminded of James Jones, WWII writer (From Here to Enternity), amongst others) who liked to shock East Coast literary parties by regaling them with stories of being on leave in Hawaii and availing himself of the services of gay men (“nice girls” didn’t screw, and hookers were expensive…) If he encountered any shock or dismay, he liked to ask “What, you never had your cock sucked by a man?”
I am reminded of Gore Vidal, who’s work I admire, and his statement “There are no homosexual people, only homosexual acts.” I think he is exaggerating for effect, but he has a point.
So wait, let me get this, uh, straight.
Just because Haggard paid a male prostitute to have sex with him, that doesn’t make him gay?
I thought wanting to have sex with men was the definition of teh gay. If paying another man to have sex with you doesn’t make you gay, what does?
You are describing opportunistic events. This guy went way out of his way to fuck a guy. For three years. All the while decrying homosexuality.
The guys in prison have nowhere else to go. It is clearly an act of power in a severely restricted environment. To compare it to driving from Colorado Springs to Denver, and paying for the privilege, is a bit of a stretch. Do you believe the prisoners or the servicemen would choose men if cheaper and less risky women were available?
He made an extreme effort to fuck a guy. Over and over again. He’s gay.
Intriguing, too, to notice everyone assuming that Haggard was the fucker (top) and not the fuckee (bottom).
If so, would that make him “Rider” Haggard? – who has evidently lost his taste for “She.” 
My usage was sloppy. I make no such assumptions. If my girlfriend and had had sex last night, (if I had a GF,) I would say that we fucked each other. I see it as a mutual act.
OK, so he’s bisexual. Maybe. Or gay pretending to be straight in terms of his public life and marriage and closeted in terms of his homosexuality. This is an important disctinction to make why?
IMO, those who think that being gay is worse than death or whatever it is that they think, will think it anyway with Haggard’s outing. Lots of people, myself included, don’t look upon prostitution as a viable career choice for anyone. I would still find Haggard a hypocrit, but would have some sympathy ala the self hatred POV if he had a long term partner in that closet, for example, instead of a, er, man ho. YMMV.
What I am trying to say, apparently vey badly (need chocolate or something)-is that confirmation bias runs rampant with these kinds of stories. See? the gay bashers say–it’s a tawdry lifestyle; it’s sick; it’s a sin. See, say the conservative christian bashers–they’re all flaming hypocrites, with the emphasis on flaming. No productive dialogue is possible.*
I, too, found this story to be amusing–it is always amusing to see hubris humbled. But those here who are calling for moderate tones have a point. The meth probably did lead him to do all manner of stuff-but I’ll bet he was going to see male prostitutes long before the meth.
*I believe that no productive dialogue is possible as long as one side sees the other as Satan incarnate, but I digress…
Which is why rape is generally considered to be a seperate phenomenon than sex. I would not consider a prison rapist to be “gay” because he has not had sex with another man; he’s raped one.
You have a point, sexuality is a fair bit more complicated than the simple gay/straight split I used earlier. However, this does not significantly alter my overall point. It is possible for a straight man to accept sex from a gay man simply as a form of release, without any particular attraction to men. Friction is friction, and if you close your eyes (and the guy’s clean shaven) a blowjob is a blowjob. Getting head from a gay guy because they’re more willing than women and cheaper than hookers is arguably not the act of a gay man, but Haggard paid for sex with another man. That’s not an act of convenience, or desperation. That’s a pretty clear statement of preference. If he didn’t care about the gender of his partners, why would he pay money to sleep with a man, when there is an overabundance of female prostitutes out there? To say nothing of all the non-“professional” women who would have been happy to give it up for a charismatic and influential man like Haggard. Sleeping with a male prostitute presented a professional risk that makes Haggard’s actions entirely nonsensical unless he has a powerful inclination towards same-sex pairings.
Yep, could be. However it just turns out that all of the learned handedness is right and all of the unlearned is left. My wife was a child learning which hand to use starting about 80 years ago.