Journalist Jeff Sharlet, who wrote a lengthy 2004 profile of Ted Haggard and New Life Church for Harper's Magazine, recently linked to an essay he wrote for Nerve in 2005 about the "man manuals" of the Christian Right... and themes of homosexuality in those books.
He makes some great observations about how fundamentalist Christian perspectives on gender have fueled the movement's obsession with gay men.
Women must submit to their husbands, but their husbands in turn must commit to "serving" their wives. The phrase that comes to mind is "separate but equal."But with Christian womanhood restored and redeemed, a crucial character in the Christian conservative morality play has gone missing: the seductress. It is no longer acceptable to speak of loose women and harlots, since sexual promiscuity in a woman is the fault of the man who has failed to exercise his "headship" over her. It is his effeminacy, not hers, that is to blame. And who lures him into this spiritual castration? The gay man.
Shorter version? The Christian men's movement's obsession with homosexuality has fetishized it to the point where gay men are more seductive than whorish women. Whoa. Read the whole thing. It's really interesting, and not only in light of recent events.
(In case you've managed to miss out on some of the details... Ted Haggard, an extreme opponent of gay marriage and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned on Saturday over allegations of a sexual relationship with a male prostitute and meth use. Check out Pandagon for some more info and thoughts on the “homo hypocrite.� And here's a YouTube video of him preaching against homosexuality.)
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Haggard's story is tragic, on so many levels.
He's a tight-wound ball of hatred and self loathing. Look at the passion in his conversation (with Dawkins, say) and in his preaching. Where does that certitude and stridency come from? Self-delusion and paranoia.
He is one messed up dude.
Reading the letter, I feel very sad for him and his family. I grew up in Colorado Springs and the evangelical community's grasp on the local culture is palpable. While I don't believe it was right of him to preach against the very things he was doing, at the same time I can't imagine how he could have sought the help he needed. In northern Colorado Springs (where New Life is located), I honestly doubt there's a single therapist who isn't somehow beholden to some aspect of The Church's highly conservative beliefs. One of my best friends in college came out our senior year -- and Colorado Springs is NOT an easy city to come out in. I can only imagine Pastor Ted felt trapped between a rock and a hard place.
I hope that he's able to get some *real* psychological help, from a doctor/therapist who will not tell him that he cannot be who he *is* without living a life of sin.
This entire event demonstrates the interwoven confusion that ministers and priests spin to support their personal lives.
"Sin #1" should be the adultery, not the orientation. Unless, of course, Mr. and Mrs. Haggard had an open marriage - LOL.
Sin #2 is lying to the congregation that homosexuality is a sin.
"The Christian men's movement's obsession with homosexuality.." Huh? Some support of this statement would be appreciated. I'd guess you don't know many people in the Christian Men's movement, or for that mater have any idea what is going on there. I've been going to Evangelical churches for 15 years and never heard a sermon on homosexuality, seen a class offered on homosexuality, or heard a word about gay marriage in any church I've been in. There are certainly pastors that preach these things from the pulpit, just like there a preachers who invite John Kerry to speak. Neither are representative of the whole.
Buffy, I think Sharlet's assessment is not based on Sunday sermons, but strictly on fundamentalist Christian literature written for men. And I think he makes a pretty good case that those books show how the Christian men's movement is disproportionately focused on homosexuality.
I've never been to one of the men's meetings (obviously) but my understanding of groups like Promise Keepers, etc., is that they teach men about "Biblical manhood", which includes being a leader over your wife/family and not engaging in sexual immorality, which is code for homosexuality. In fairness, they do also condemn adultery, but there's definitely visceral dislike for homosexuality in evangelical circuits.
I'm not saying this because I particularly have something against evangelicals -- I was a fundamentalist evangelical during my formative years, and my dad and many of the men in my church attended meetings like this regularly. And we did occasionally get a sermon talking about homosexuality... I don't believe this was ever the *point* of a sermon, but pointing to gays was an "old reliable" data point for demonstrating the moral decay experienced by society since, eh, the fifties-ish.
My experience with Christian men's groups is that they focus almost all of their effort in the sexual sin department on pornigraphy these days as the stats show Christian men no different than other men in being users of pornography - especially online pornography. It would seem these groups and feminists are strange bedfellows in fighting porn.