Well, here you go again:  The reason so many preachers and fundamentalist Christians keep finding their “moral” leaders in the throes of beefy male escorts and strippers?  It’s the “all or nothing” attitude towards homosexuality, meaning you’re the “Grand Marshall of the pride parade” as you write, or a completely straight Captain of the Football Team, and NO in between - well it’s something that fundie groups continue to hang on to and pass on to their little cherubs.

They refuse to acknowledge that many gay couples live a normal boring life of cooking dinner at home, going to the movies, and arguing about what to order on Netflix. It’s plenty possible to live a “straight life” with your partner, and not fluctuate between minivans and meth. (As shown by Ted Haggard).

This day and age, in MOST areas, it’s slowly becoming a non-issue to most, even the ones that punched a ticket full of Republicans last Tuesday. Even moderate Christians have made peace with a “Live and let Live” attitude.

My BIGGEST problem with the Ted Haggards of the world is the propagation of another generation of fundie parents who will TOTALLY fuck up their kid’s lives. Fundamentalist parents send their kids to ex-gay camps, or “therapists” who work out of the church. The ones than accept that “not pure in Christ” Dr Dobson bullshit end up 20 years later married and having unprotected sex with truckers (or whores) every week. Sorry mother-in-law: I’ve been fucking guys AND your daughter for 20 years. Like our hero Ted must say.

Just as worse: The kids that DO leave home and head to NY, SF, LA, end up TOTALLY unprepared for dealing with the lifestyle they find. An 18 year old being dropped into West Hollywood hoping for a table full of happy friends accepting friends will often be used, screwed, and abused by pathetic self destructive gay people that prey upon “fresh meat”. The gay community isn’t all rainbows and sunshine, and an asshole parent that says “whatever” to their kid and sends them packing messes them up almost as much as the ex-gay fuckwads do.

So note to right wing fundie parents: While you’re kicking your gay kids out of the house because YOU can’t deal, at least read a PFLAG flyer and give them some appropriate resources, unless you truly DO wish them a shitty life.
 

Denver Post Article: Pastor resigns over homosexuality
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated:12/11/2006 08:41:27 AM MST
In a tearful videotaped message Sunday to his congregation, the senior pastor of a thriving evangelical megachurch in south metro Denver confessed to sexual relations with other men and announced he had voluntarily resigned his pulpit.

A month ago, the Rev. Paul Barnes of Grace Chapel in Douglas County preached to his 2,100-member congregation about integrity and grace in the aftermath of the Ted Haggard drugs-and-gay-sex scandal.

Now, the 54-year-old Barnes joins Haggard as a fallen evangelical minister who preached that homosexuality was a sin but grappled with a hidden life.

“I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy,” Barnes said in the 32- minute video, which church leaders permitted The Denver Post to view. “… I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.”

His wife, Char, cradled his hand. Barnes declined an interview request through the church.

Unlike Haggard, who had the ear of the White House, Barnes is not a household name. He is a self-described introvert who avoids politics, preferring to talk about a Gen-X service at the nondenominational church he started 28 years ago in his basement, church officials said.

Barnes and Grace Chapel stayed out of the debate over Amendment 43, a measure approved by Colorado voters last month defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

“I can’t think of a single sermon where he ever had a political agenda,” said Dave Palmer, an associate pastor.

Palmer said the church got an anonymous call last week from a person concerned for the welfare of Barnes and the church. The caller had overheard a conversation in which someone mentioned “blowing the whistle” on evangelical preachers engaged in homosexuality, including Barnes, Palmer said.

Palmer met with Barnes, who confessed. At an emergency meeting Thursday, a board of elders accepted Barnes’ resignation after he admitted “sexual infidelity,” violating the church’s code of conduct. Church leaders also must affirm annually that they are “living the moral and ethical teachings of Scripture in my public and private life.”

Asked for details of Barnes’ transgressions, Palmer called them “infrequent events in his life” that to his knowledge did not take place in recent months.

Sitting cross-legged in jeans and an open-collar shirt, Barnes spoke in his video about evolving feelings growing up in a firm moral family: from confused little boy to adolescent racked with self-loathing and guilt.

In their only talk about sex, Barnes said his father took him on a drive and talked about what he would do if a “fag” approached him.

Barnes thought, “‘Is that how you’d feel about me?’ It was like a knife in my heart, and it made me feel even more closed.”

When Barnes experienced a Christian conversion at 17, it gave him a glimmer of hope. But his homosexual feelings never went away, he said. He said he cannot accept that a person is “born that way,” so he looks to childhood influences.

Barnes said he asked God many times why he was called to ministry, to start Grace Chapel, carrying a “horrible burden.”

The soft-spoken Barnes is an unlikely big-church pastor.

After graduating from Dallas Theological Seminary, Barnes and his wife moved to Denver and began a Bible study. His church met in a school and a mortuary, bought property at Colorado Boulevard and Arapahoe Road, and now occupies a campus off County Line Road that used to be a car dealership.

Barnes described struggling with what he believes is the biblical teaching that homosexuality is an abomination. Over the years, he grew to accept that “this is my thorn in the flesh.”

Barnes expressed hope for a future where one can “be who you are” and be accepted and loved in the Christian community and also spoke about “separating some of the teachings from Scripture” from Jesus Christ.

Palmer said he wasn’t sure what Barnes meant, but Barnes told him that he believes God views homosexuality as a sin.

Barnes said he has been in counseling three times and never found anyone he could talk to.

His wife said on the video that she didn’t know about her husband’s struggles until he confided in her last week. The couple has two daughters in their 20s.

Char Barnes said she feels “like I’m living someone else’s life” but was grateful her husband revealed himself. The couple said they hope to stay in Denver. Near the tape’s end, Paul Barnes says, “This is what it is, it’s right, and it’s time.”

Church elder Russ Pilcher said the reaction at services Sunday was largely concern for the couple. “I thought, ‘Where did I fall short in making myself so unapproachable that he couldn’t come to me?”‘ Pilcher said.

Paul and Char Barnes will get counseling, but unlike Haggard, they will not go into seclusion or report to a board of reconcilers, Palmer said. He said it will be more personal and that church members will play a role.

Associate pastor John Zivojinovic is the interim senior pastor, and choosing a successor is still months away, Pilcher said.

Given the Haggard story, Pal mer was asked whether Barnes’ fall from grace would expose the evangelical community to further charges of hypocrisy.

“The criticism is valid if you look at perfection being the mark, because the next person who stands at our pulpit is going to be guilty of not being perfect as well,” he said. “Does that mean we have to change what we say about the word of God? We can’t do that.”