Slacktivist comments on the unfortunate tale of a promiment figure in the Southern Baptist Convention and senior pastor of South Tulsa Baptist Church, Rev. Lonnie Latham, arrested last week outside a hotel for propositioning a plainclothes policeman for oral sex.
Rev. Latham's previous public disclosures concern gay sex were of the most anti- variety: he has opposed equal marriage rights for lesbians and gays and supported a denominational directive urging Southern Baptists to convert them to heterosexuality "by accepting Jesus Christ as their savior and reject[ing] their 'sinful, destructive lifestyle."'
Slacktivist questions the commonly held theory that religious conservatives love to target gays and lesbians for condemnation because we're perceived as relatively safe and easy targets:
Condemning anything as a sin is a dangerous business. You get up on a soapbox and start railing against envy, sloth, gluttony, greed, wrath, lust or pride and eventually people will begin to realize that you're very well acquainted with your subject matter.The only safe "sin" to preach against is one you can be sure you'll never commit -- never even be tempted to commit. So, if you're straight, you preach against homosexuality. You can further protect yourself by portraying it as the worst possible sin. That way when you get caught doing whatever it is you will inevitably get caught doing, you can argue that at least you're not as bad as those wretched homosexuals.
But as Slacktivist notes, stories like that of Lonnie Latham suggest at least one alternative explanation for so much of the vehement anti-gay rhetoric: 'Perhaps these preachers doth protest too much.'
My own reaction, based on personal experience, is that this is true perhaps more than many people realize. I have known (or known of through friends) a considerable number of very religious, strongly anti-gay homosexuals in my lifetime, including not an insignificant number of clergy. I often think the issue with fundamentalists (and religious conservatives in general) being so irrationally anti-gay, is that so many of them are just swimming in a cess-pool of their own imaginations that more sexually 'liberated' out gay men may at times find hard to comprehend.
Truth is, you simply can't lift a pew cushion in most evangelical and pentecostal churches without ruffling at least a few poorly concealed boa feathers. 'I'm not gay; nobody knows I'm gay,' they will tell themselves as they go about bashing queers (literally or figuratively), many betraying their secret only anonymously to other gay men in darkened bars or hotel rooms.
This has less to do with latent homosexuality as it does with blatant homosexuality entombed in denial, struggle, cover up, sublimation, reparative therapy, sexual abuse and so on. Some of the most strident evangelical voices opposed to GLBT civil rights are the so-called ex-gays. Nobody believes for a moment that these folk are not gay, least of all the scurrillous demagogues who trot them out as proof of 'Christ's redemptive power' at Exodus conferences, knowing all the while that sooner or later many of them will fall back into their 'lecherous perversions' unless they 'hold fast to Christ'. Proof of this can be found in the numerouss 'ex-gay' leaders who are now ex-ex-gay and have been spurned totally by the movement's followers.
Cognitive dissonance leads to internalized homophobia and a desire to lash out. It is a type of defense mechanism. I'm not saying every hysterically anti-gay person out there is presumed to be gay, but there is plenty of anecdotal and clinical evidence available to suggest that repressed and denied homosexuality is a powerful engine for religious homophobia.
And how the tables turn when the facade drops, the veneer is lost, the family illusion shattered. On January 6 the Rev. Lonnie Latham resigned from his church and from his denominational duties, refering only to "this incident" and "personal reasons". A spokesperson for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma said "We pray Lonnie will find healing and restoration as he seeks help for the issues he faces," adding that the resignation was "accepted without the BGCO Board of Directors having to take the initiative regarding the matter" (emphasis mine).
Presumably the good, but fallen, pastor fell on his own sword to save others from having to thrust it in for him. Images of the poor fellow were quickly removed from the Tulsa church's web site.
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