If Gay Marriage Were Legal In 1998, Maybe Paul Crouch Would Still Be Preaching

Pastor Paul and his lover Enoch

Oh... he still is... at least on TV. Crouch, the founder of Trinity Broadcasting Network empire, the country's largest "Christian" television network, is 79 and pretty senile-- though not when it comes to sharp business dealings and milking the cash cow TBN has become. His baby, the international network, is bigger than CBS, bigger than Fox and bigger than NBC. The Crouch family has been using it as a personal piggy bank for years-- which has very serious-- and very unexplored-- tax implications. In 2010, Forbes reported that Crouch was paid just over $400,000 a year by TBN-- and that doesn't count the mansions, the Bentley, the half million dollar annual expense accounts, and the $50 million personal jet. Still, it's less than what he embezzled from the company to pay his lover, Enoch Lonnie Ford, to keep quiet about their homosexual relationship. Oh, those right-wing evangelicals are so wild and crazy!

When Rick Jones, an ordained minister and former cop, heard his boss talking about another minister's homosexual activity with an employee, he "got up and walked away," the Los Angeles Times reported on its front page yesterday. "I didn't want to hear gossip."

But his boss was televangelist Benny Hinn, a staple on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. And Hinn was talking about TBN founder and president Paul Crouch. And Los Angeles Times reports that it's no longer just gossip-- it's a tale of attempted extortion, litigation, and tragedy.

For all the details, you'll have to read William Lobdell's extensively reported, 1,900-word article. But here are a few observations.

First, extortion seems like the only word to describe what Enoch Lonnie Ford, the former TBN employee who says he and Crouch had extramarital sex in 1996, attempted. Crouch paid him a $425,000 settlement in 1998 after Ford accused the global network of wrongful termination. Key to the settlement, of course, was a secrecy agreement. Last April, however, Ford handed Crouch an autobiographical manuscript detailing his claims of a sexual encounter.

Why is the senile man in Jerusalem wearing a priest's collar & a pinkie ring? 

TBN had paid off Ford to keep the gay sex thing quiet years earlier but he wanted $10,000,000 more to not publish a book that details his affair with Crouch. That L.A. Times reported that "Crouch sued to enforce the 1998 secrecy agreement and obtained a restraining order barring Ford from seeking a publisher for his book. Orange County Superior Court Judge John M. Watson also granted Crouch's request to conduct the case in secret, sealing all documents and expunging any mention of the suit from public court records. Both sides eventually agreed to let a private arbitrator decide the matter. In June, the arbitrator ruled that Ford could not publish the manuscript without violating the 1998 settlement-- an act that could subject him to monetary damages."

Somehow being fleeced by charlatans has become an integral part of the American evangelical movement so not many people even remember the on-going Crouch saga. (His grandson, Matthew, another holy roller, can't keep his junk in his pants and has been obsessively exposing his genitals to staff members.) But even if normal people don't remember much about the crazy Crouches, most people still do remember when the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted "Pastor Ted" Haggard insisted he "never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife. So I don't know if this is election year politics [Haggard, like all these phony-baloney evangelical frauds, was busy turning out the brainless flock for the GOP] or if this has to do with the marriage amendment or what it is." What it was, of course, came with lots and lots of evidence of Haggard hiring high end male prostitutes for years and using street drugs to boot. As his story unraveled, it just took a few days before that standard Republican mantra--"never had a gay relationship with anybody"-- turned into "there is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all my adult life."

That's the real right-wing problem with the LGBT community-- terror about something "repulsive" and "dark" within. Get over it, gentlemen. It's not repulsive and it's not dark-- even if you perceive it that way. If you can't give up your sick wars within, stop trying to ruin everyone else's lives by dragging us into your drama. Go deal with your problems or commit suicide or do whatever you want, but leave people who have evolved alone. This has gone on way long enough. You guys are a menace to society-- and in a very big way.

Oh... so this is where GOP sociopath Paul Broun (R-GA) got his most famous quote about "lies straight from the pit of hell."

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Is The GOP Still In Thrall To The Lavender Scare?

Rep. Aaron Schock's lavender belt

It was historical for Jason Collins to write in Sports Illustrated today that "I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay." I bet it will inspire and fortify thousands of young men and women all over the world. I recall, vividly, sitting with Harvey Milk in the backroom office of his Castro Street camera shop right after a flurry of national media coverage of his successful election as a San Francisco Supervisor. He pulled out a mailbag filled with letters from people. There's one he read to me that still makes my eyes well up with tears. It was from a terrified gay kid in Nebraska or Kansas who talked about how Harvey's election had given him the hope that he didn't have to commit suicide. Collins:

I realized I needed to go public when Joe Kennedy, my old roommate at Stanford and now a Massachusetts congressman, told me he had just marched in Boston's 2012 Gay Pride Parade. I'm seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn't even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator. If I'd been questioned, I would have concocted half truths. What a shame to have to lie at a celebration of pride. I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, "Me, too."

The recent Boston Marathon bombing reinforced the notion that I shouldn't wait for the circumstances of my coming out to be perfect. Things can change in an instant, so why not live truthfully? When I told Joe a few weeks ago that I was gay, he was grateful that I trusted him. He asked me to join him in 2013. We'll be marching on June 8.

No one wants to live in fear. I've always been scared of saying the wrong thing. I don't sleep well. I never have. But each time I tell another person, I feel stronger and sleep a little more soundly. It takes an enormous amount of energy to guard such a big secret. I've endured years of misery and gone to enormous lengths to live a lie. I was certain that my world would fall apart if anyone knew. And yet when I acknowledged my sexuality I felt whole for the first time. I still had the same sense of humor, I still had the same mannerisms and my friends still had my back.

I used to think I was colorblind because I started hanging around with a bunch of really over-the-top, effeminate gay guys in Amsterdam. The ring leader-- or den mother-- was the grandson of a very right-wing Republican congressman from Ohio and the family was happy to pay him a-- what seemed at the time to me-- gargantuan sum to stay out of the U.S. Anyway, that's a whole other story. The reason I thought I was colorblind is because these guys used to always be talking about colors I couldn't see: russet, saffron, mauve, cerulean, sable, jacinthe, azure, chartreuse, aubergine, celadon, vermilion, lavender. Eventually I figured out I wasn't colorblind, just ignorant. Eventually I bought a whole set of dishes in Chiang Mai made of celadon and one of the bands on my label named an album Cerulean. And then there was the infamous photo of Illinois Republican Congressman Aaron Schock (above) in his very gay get up-- he tweeted he burned the whole outfit after the picture went viral-- with a lavender (is that lavender?) belt.

Lavender has been tied to the LGBT community long before the Illinois closet case started sashaying around in that belt. In fact, this is the 60th anniversary of what was once known as "the Lavender Purge," perfect for a national debate about passing ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

On April 27, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an executive order calling for the removal of homosexuals from all federal agencies. Gay and lesbian government workers were immediately fired or resigned out of fear of being publicly outed.  Even LGBT people working in the private sector whose jobs required them to have a federal security clearance were also fired or resigned.

The supposed justification for the purge was that homosexuals were a godless, immoral group who would work with communists to overthrow the government, thereby posing an imminent threat to national security.

While many remember the “Red Scare” of the mid-20th century, the purging of LGBT government employees, dubbed the “Lavender Scare,” today rarely receives its due as a catalyst for the LGBT equality movement. In 2004, David K. Johnson helped bring the historical moment to light in his book The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government.

Do you think Jason Collins will inspire Aaron Schock? Lindsey Graham? Patrick McHenry? Do you think any of the dozen or so Republican closet cases in Congress will come out? Do you think Josh Howard's film based on Johnson's book will help Miss McConnell reach down deep and find the courage? Dave Camp? Adrian Smith? Trent Franks? Forget it. It's more likely they'll be shuddering in fear behind their closet doors praying it isn't their turn to be caught yet, so have to claim alcoholism and resign in self-imposed antebellum disgrace. It's more likely that they're petrified that a book like David Rosen's Sex Scandal America-- Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming will one day include a paragraph or two about them. Will one of them be the next Bob Bauman (R-MD) or Jon Hinson (R-MS)? This is how Rosen dealt with the horrors visited on the LGBT community during the '50s.

The social repression of homosexuals during this period took many forms and involved both governmental and civil action. Government repression was implemented in two ways: in actions directed at federal employees (civilian or military) and in actions directed at the American citizenry. Government action took place on many fronts. Congressional and federal officials held hearings and investigations, conducted raids, undertook prosecutions and imprisoned ordinary (and sometimes extra-ordinary) people. Repression was framed as a battle over loyalty and ended in many front page exposés, with Weegee-esque black-and-white shots that gave the event a tawdry sheen. The social repression of this period represented the profound political instability America was confronting in terms of both domestic and international power.

Congressional hearings (as well as innumerable local and state government probes) were directed at perverts-- homosexuals, and pornographers, publishers of pulp fiction, comic books and "adult" photo-magazines. Among these, and probably the most pitiful, was the campaign waged against homosexuals. In 1950, the Nebraska House Republican, A.L. Miller helped write special language into that year's Security Act which legitimized the investigation of those identified as "perverts." At the other end of Congress, the Senate conducted a wide-ranging into the presence of "homosexuals and other perverts" in the federal government. Advocating the removal of all homosexuals from government employment (both civilian and military), the Senate report warned that "perverts tend to have a corrosive influence upon his fellow employees. These perverts will frequently attempt to entice normal individuals to engage in perverted practices. This is particularly true in the case of young and impressionable people who might come under the influence of a pervert... One homosexual can pollute a government office."

That wasn't all that long ago. Today the Senate has gay members but one, Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), was elected as an upfront gay person, her gender preference not even an issue in her election. There are openly gay Members of Congress from Colorado, Rhode Island, Arizona, California, Wisconsin and one, Carl Sciortino, likely to move from the Massachusetts state legislature to Congress in a special election. Still, none of the Republican gays in Congress have the guts to come out-- or to even support and end to discrimination against gays in employment. Jeff Merkely (D-OR) is working on getting some Republicans to help him shut down the '50's era, bigoted filibuster promised by reactionaries like Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jeff Sessions (KKK-AL). Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) are already on board and Rob Portman (the one with the gay son) may be coming along. But does anyone think there's any chance in hell that GOP closet cases Lindsey Graham and Miss McConnell would even consider backing ENDA? The only thing that keeps homophobia alive are gays too cowardly to come out and accept themselves.

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Miss McConnell, A Closeted Homosexual, Threatens A "Scorched Earth" Campaign Against Anyone Who Runs Against Him

Carl Sciortino (D-MA), Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), and Miss McConnell (R-KY) all have something in common; they're gay. Sciortino has been endorsed by Blue America and we're helping him raise money for his congressional race here. He's amassed a breathtakingly courageous record as a Massachusetts state legislator and, gay or straight, he would make one of Congress' most outstanding members-- a proven leader on the toughest progressive causes, a real Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson, Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison type. Sean Patrick Maloney defeated Republican Nan Hayworth in a blue-leaning district-- Obama won with 51.4%-- that spans Dutchess, Orange, Putnam and Westchester counties. There's nothing particularly courageous or progressive about him. He Maloney is a run-of-the-mill mainstream Democrat who quickly joined the Wall Street-funded New Dems and already has one of the worst voting records of any New York Democrat-- voting more frequently against the progressive agenda than for it. He's exactly tied with New Dem Dan Maffei and just fractionally better than New York's most right-wing Democratic congressman Bill Owens. Needless to say, Blue America would never endorse Maloney or back him, regardless of his sexuality, and one day, we hope to support a more progressive primary challenger. He does vote well on issues impacting the LGBT community at least.

Miss McConnell is a closet case with the worst record on LGBT issues in the entire Congress. ProgressivePunch rates him a ZERO in the current session and a ZERO for his entire career. Miss McConnell is what you call a mentally unbalanced hypocrite, exactly the type Republican state Senator Roy Ashburn warned us about when he was caught, drunk, with a young male prostitute in his car and decided to come out of the closet and come clean. Right after his arrest Ashburn went on the radio and told his constituents that he'd been "hiding" for his entire career, being a leader in legislative homophobia to cover up his own fears of being exposed.

"I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic 'no' vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that."

No one thinks we'll ever hear those words coming from Miss McConnell-- but no one ever thought we'd hear them coming from Senator Ashburn either. Unlike swishy, fun-loving "lifelong bachelors" like Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Aaron Schock (R-IL), David Dreier (R-CA) and Mark Foley (R-FL), Miss McConnell isn't fooling around. He's dedicated to keeping that closet door shut TIGHT. Like other psychotic GOP closet cases Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Larry Craig (R-ID) and Jim McCrery (R-LA), he's entered into a phony-baloney "marriage" to trick voters into thinking he's straight. He's become personally very rich while serving in the Senate-- the 10th wealthiest person in that body with an estimated net worth north of $40 million-- and there's a lot riding on his ability to hold onto that Kentucky Senate seat from which all those millions flow his way.

He may be relieved Ashley Judy is giving the race a pass but there are two more lethal threats to his career ahead, a possible Tea Party primary and then popular Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, a mainstream Democrat. It isn't likely that McConnell's sexual hypocrisy is going to do him much damage in his reelection bid. His base doesn't believe it and normal people already oppose him. But the stories about McConnell fondling a private's private parts and then getting tossed out of the Army in 1967 have been around. People have even talked to witnesses but no one comes forward on the record and the media plays it down-- just like they always did with Idaho Senator Larry Craig and Florida Congressman Mark Foley-- until they were caught in the act.

McConnell has been very careful to make sure his military records will never fall into the hands of anyone trying to expose him. Officially he was released from active duty service after 4 months-- at the height of the Vietnam War-- for optic neuritis (a very minor and treatable condition, something like the infamous pilonidal cyst that kept Rush Limbaugh from ever doing his military service). Optic Neuritis is normally associated with multiple sclerosis which is not one of the afflictions McConnell has suffered from. Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper, for whom McConnell had served as an intern, actually took a hand in covering up McConnell's dirty grab and discharge with a letter to the commanding officer at Ft. Knox where McConnell got into trouble.

In the spring of 2008, Mike Rogers, one of the journalists who first reported how Larry Craig was trawling public toilets looking for sex, wrote about a startling similarity between Craig-- who also molested enlisted men in the army-- and McConnell:

McConnell's discharge was expedited by Cooper's claim that the enlistee needed to be released quickly to attend New York University.

NYU records, however, indicate that McConnell never applied to the school, and at the time of his discharge he had already earned a law degree from the University of Kentucky. Why exactly would a United States Senator write to the Commanding General of one of the nation's most important military installations with false information about a member of the US armed forces?

A lot of smart people have pursued this story. The common thread? McConnell's military records. That's because those records are private, unless of course McConnell chooses to make them public. Sen. McConnell doesn't even acknowledge his military service on either his US Senate or re-election campaign websites, so it's probably no surprise that he's kept those records under lock and key for years.

So, why revisit this story, and why revisit it now?

Like when I investigated and reported on Larry Craig after 26 years of rumors, I've turned fresh eyes on this case and recently noticed an interesting inconsistency with McConnell's public Army record. In particular, there is a differing answer to a section of his records titled, "Transcript of Court Martial." While every other section of McConnell's records without information simply "n/a," this particular section uniquely states, "not on file." Does that mean a McConnell court martial file exists? Only the Senator knows.

I also have reviewed copies of phone records showing a flurry of calls from the office of McConnell's patron in the Senate, Sen. Cooper, in the days immediately preceding McConnell's discharge. The calls abruptly stopped as McConnell was released from the service. It is also interesting to note that the UK archives show that despite a frequent correspondence during the years prior to his discharge, it was three years after McConnell's discharge before they exchanged letters again.

McConnell, of course adamantly refuses to allow the release of his records. They're as tightly closeted as he is. The country is moving; Miss McConnell isn't. From an analysis of that movement by Anzalone Research, the Blue Dog consulting firm:

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that support for marriage equality stands at the highest it's been in the ten years the question has been asked.  Right now, 58% of Americans believe it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married, while 36% think it should be illegal. In 2003, those numbers were an almost mirror-opposite: 37% supported legal marriage for same-sex couples, while 55% opposed it. According to the poll, marriage equality enjoys majority support from men and women and across major educational, income and regional divides for the first time...Our own polling on behalf of the Americans for Equal Rights found that 75% of Americans now believe that the ability to marry the person you love is a Constitutional right. Secondly, this once hot-button political issue is as much a generational divide as a partisan one.

...Support has risen across racial groups and religious affiliations, as well, though substantial divides still exist. A majority of Catholics (both white and Hispanic) support marriage equality, but only a third of Protestants do.  Part of the reason Protestant support is lower is that support among white Evangelicals stands at just 19%. There is also a big difference between white mainline Protestants, a majority of whom support same-sex marriage, and black Protestants, of which only a third support marriage equality.

While support has grown among the religiously affiliated, this does not necessarily mean their religious views have changed. In fact, 56% of Americans believe same-sex marriage conflicts with their religious beliefs, yet 66% think that same-sex couples should have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples.  Among the 28% who agree with both statements, support for marriage equality is split, 46% favor to 44% oppose.

Support among African Americans has increased dramatically in recent years. Some of this increase may be due to President Obama's declaration of support last May. Polls conducted by Public Policy Polling in North Carolina and Maryland saw a major shift of support after the announcement, as did a national poll conducted by ABC News/Washington Post, which found 59% of African Americans in support of same-sex marriage, an 18-point jump from the average of 41% in polls before Obama's announcement.

Why the shift?

While generational changes can explain part of the shift (Millennials make up a larger share of the adult population today than 10 years ago) that is not the whole story. Politicians like President Obama, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator Rob Portman and former Secretary of State Colin Powell have publicly spoken about their personal journeys on the topic, and they are not alone. According to Pew, 14% of the public, or one in seven Americans, has changed his or her mind in support of gay marriage.

When asked what it was that made them change their mind, 32%, like Portman and Cheney, attributed it to knowing someone who is homosexual. Another 25% have had an "evolution" like Obama, saying they had given it more thought and grown more open. And after an election season that saw voters in three states approve measures legalizing same-sex marriages, and voters in another state reject an amendment that would have denied same-sex couples the right to marry, 18% said they changed their mind because they think the world has changed and same-sex marriage is inevitable.

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