the lady doth protest too much ...

So apparently, George Rekers has pulled a Ted Haggard--heck, may even have topped Ted Haggard.  This is one of the co-founders of the Family Research Council, on the Board of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality, and who worked with the disingenuously named American College of Pediatricians.

And he just got back from a European vacation with a gay hooker.

The denials have been classic--he hired the boy to carry his luggage.  He was, like Jesus, hanging out with prostitutes and sharing the good news.  He talk about the possibility of "ceasing homosexual practices", and "shar[ed] scientific [sic] information [sic] on the desirability of abandoning homosexual intercourse."

Abandoning homosexual intercourse in favor of other things, like nude crotch massages.

The lady doth, indeed, protest too much.

Coincidentally, another story from the same blog where I read about Rekers mentioned that a "former" gay leader turned "straight" fundie has written an open letter to Ricky Martin:

the man who became an entertainer, beloved for his sex appeal, then turned into a practicing gay man by the pressure of a culture that idolizes sex over virtue ...

Apparently all those scantily-clad women throwing themselves at him all those years turned him queer.  Let this be a warning to us all.  Humor aside, the letter is a study in pathology and disinformation:

If masculinity can be undermined, the people will be without a powerful spine – and charismatic leaders with nothing but power and control in mind can assume that power and control.

Now that Ricky Martin is out of the closet, where are the big, strong, manly men who will lead us against tyranny?  This is totally not channeling frustration at the inability to be aroused by women into raging misogyny, much less transferring sexual desire for men into adulation of abstract masculinity!

I will merciful skip over the masses of lies about therapy and turning straight and whatnot.  There is, however, one bit which I consider crucial:

The pressure to succumb to homosexual desires is also immense. And this goes for anybody – homosexual desire is something that anybody can succumb to, just as it is something that anybody can turn away from.

Well, no.  No it isn't.  The poor fellow has absolutely no idea how straight men think.  Here's a simple test: look at a picture of an attractive guy and imagine having sex with him.  If your testicles retreat into your abdomen, then you're straight.  If, however, you think to yourself (as he does) "the seduction of homosexuality is so powerful," then you're not, and no amount of therapy, labeling, blogging, lying, or even getting married will change that.  

The problem here is externalization.  In homosexuals, the sex drive, for reasons not yet fully understood* but at any rate irreversible, points towards members of their own gender.  For humans, the sex drive is inextricably bound up with identity.  One of the many places where the anti-gay movement (and closet cases especially) go wrong is to deny sexuality a role in identity.  Thus, you're not gay, you suffer from gay urges, as if there existed some nefarious entity called 'gay urges' or 'homosexual desire' that implacably afflicted you, rather than it being what you yourself really want.

If asked, they would certainly claim that they didn't want it, that they fervently wished, more than anything in the whole world, to desire the opposite sex, and they are correct.  That is a mystery, and a paradox, for as O'Connor said, free will consists not of one will, but of many wills striving within us.  But the problem is that you can't will away your other will.  The prefrontal lobes cannot simply rewire the rest of the brain, and I cannot help but feel immense sympathy for the misery endured by those who try, and a most profound anger at those who continually urge them to it.

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*I saw a TV special on studies of sexual orientation in identical twins. I can't find it, but it indicated that having a twin who was gay was about a 50% predictor for being gay oneself--which means that being gay is probably around 50% genetic and 50% other factors--that particular documentary suggested prenatal hormones.

Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?

The most popular pickup line at my college was: "God told me to ask you out." You see a girl, you think she's hot, but wait! Surely this thought had to come from somewhere! Surely it couldn't have come from my own mind, oh no, surely a thought with the promise of such a sweet loving reward must have come from God.

Conversely, if your thoughts about the girl were strictly of a carnal nature and your better angels were hard pressed to resist, then it was the devil that was tempting you.

There's a lot that goes into this kind of thought process. This particular form results from an evangelical upbringing that deems every soul an arena in which no lesser foes than God and Lucifer himself do daily battle by way of manipulating impulses and events re-imagined as signs. Tell a child to seek God's leading and he'll seek it. Tell the same child that the devil will attack him, and he'll look for that, too--and if he looks hard enough, he'll find it.

But mostly it's a way of ducking responsibility by externalization--it's not me having lustful thoughts, it's satan tempting me. It's not me risking rejection, it's God's plan. The thought is merely the incidental result of some phenomenon outside your own mind.

'God told me to ask you out' is mostly a joke. It can also take other, less amusing forms: it's why 'the girl' was 'asking for it', it's why women wear burkas instead of men wearing blindfolds, and it's the answer to the question, 'Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?'

It's rationalization by externalization, and it's a dangerous step: you are no longer responsible since the impetus comes from elsewhere, from the other, from the victim.

Death threats in American politics are par for the course, and there are procedures set up to deal with that sort of thing. But the response to the passage of the healthcare bill crossed the line into actual violence--not just riot-style violence, which often happens when large groups of angry people get together, but personal violence perpetrated by individuals against individuals.

And instead of condemning the violence, the entire right is fanning the flames, starting with Sarah Palin's 'Reload!' But more importantly, from the top to the bottom, the message is clear: blame the victims. From the guy who successfully called for vandalism warning Democrats of the "unintended consequences of their actions" to Newt Gringrich saying,

I would condemn any kind of activity that involves that kind of personal threat. But look, I think there’s something very disingenuous about the Democratic leaders who attacked the tea party movement, who refused to hold town hall meetings, who refused to go back home, who kept the Congress locked up in Washington, and are now shocked that people are angry. I think the Democratic leadership has to take some moral responsibility for having behaved with such arrogance, in such a hostile way, that the American people are deeply upset.

These people who have been fanning the flames of discontent for months. But now that actual violence has started, the same folks who want everyone else's social benefits slashed because of personal responsibility are, with one voice, denying any and all personal responsibility.

Baby, why you gotta make me hit you?