{religion} – Page 46 – { feuilleton }

God in the machines

• Compact, robust and easy to use;
• Long lasting battery life;
• Large LCD with blue backlight for night time viewing;
• Built-in audio speaker;
• Built-in DC adapter jack;
• Ability to record up to 3 hours* of voice;
• Follow and compare your own voice with the reciters;
• Excellent sound quality with AudiTrax technology;
• Inter-changeable audio plug-in system;
• Bookmark function;
• Repeat function;
• Search function;
• Full audio recitation;
• Approved/licensed Qur’an text in Arabic (Uthmanic font type);
• Approved/licensed Qur’an text in English (Mushin Khan’s translation);
• Approved Islamic contents in both Arabic and English translation.

Modern Orthodox by Elliott Malkin.

Modern Orthodox is a working demonstration of my next-generation laser eruv system. An eruv (pronounced ey-roov) is a symbolic boundary erected around religious Jewish communities throughout the world. While an eruv is typically constructed with poles and wires, Modern Orthodox employs a combination of low-power lasers, wifi surveillance cameras and graffiti, as a way of designating sacred volumes of space in urban areas.

Crucifix NG by Elliott Malkin.

Crucifix NG (Next Generation) is the principal work of the Faith-Based Electronics Group at the Interactive Televangelist Program (ITP). Crucifix NG is a printed electronic circuit board in the shape of a crucifix. This handheld, wall-mountable device houses a battery-operated transmitter that broadcasts an ASCII, non-denominational version of the Lord’s Prayer at 916 megahertz. (916 has no numerological significance – it is simply a function of the availability of low-cost transmission chips within this FCC license-free bandwidth.)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Layering Buddha by Robert Henke

Interview with the Hustler

Left: Michael Jones.

Irony abounds. In the Protect-me-from-what-I-want Dept, Pastor Ted Haggard gave this sermon four days before his gay liaisons were brought to light: “Heavenly Father give us grace and mercy, help us this next week and a half as we go into national elections and Lord we pray for our country. Father we pray lies would be exposed and deception exposed. Father we pray that wisdom would come upon our electorate…” Who says prayer doesn’t work?

Michelangelo Signorile has a show on Sirius Satellite Radio’s OutQ, America’s gay radio station (2-6 pm EST). Today he interviews Michael Jones, the escort whose meetings with Pastor Ted caused the evangelical leader’s fall from grace last week. Here’s an extract.

Michelangelo Signorile: I’m here with Michael Jones, the man who of course is at the center of enormous controversy. We’re in New York City, at the Waldorf-Astoria. He came to New York do the Today show.

What was that like flying in just to do the Today show about all of this, and then flying out?

Michael Jones: Well, in the last three days I’ve had three hours of sleep, so I’m exhausted. The whole process has been highly educational for me, but it’s grueling.

MS: Tell me a bit about how you first met Ted Haggard.

MJ: It was approximately three years ago. Got a call from a gentleman who said his name was Art. He wanted to see if we could hook up. At the time I was advertising as an escort in gay publications. I only advertised in gay publications. So if someone was looking for me, they were looking in a gay publication. He said he was from Kansas City and he wanted to hook up. We hooked up at my place. Always at my place. I had never been to a hotel with him.

MS: Did he use the term “hook up?” I mean, what did he actually say he wanted to do?

MJ: He said he wanted an appointment with me. He came to my apartment. And the clothes came right off. The first time it was pretty much mutual masturbation, then in time oral sex. He was really pretty vanilla. Only once in three years did we try anal sex.

MS: Was he a top or bottom? What was he interested in?

MJ: When I was on the radio show in Denver, the question was asked: Did you practice safe sex? I said, “We used a condom once.” The talk show host goes, “You mean he wore the condom once?” I said, “Uh, no, I did.”

MS: What about with oral sex. Was he the passive partner or the active partner?

MJ: You know, it kind of went back and forth ? and I can’t say he was very good at it.

MS: Did he seem like he’d done this before?

MJ: I don’t know. He didn’t appear nervous to me. He was very quiet. Didn’t talk much. Liked the lights low. He never was with me for more than an hour. Sometimes it was just 15 or 20 minutes.

MS: Did he want companionship or was it all sex?

MJ: It was pretty much in and out. Sex, no speaking. Do the thing, and then he left. I could see the street from where I live and I could see he would park a block away and when he would call me he would block the calls, at least in that in the first year. After that first year he started calling me from pay phones and I noticed the area code was Colorado Springs.

***

MS: And you’d had people who came from Colorado Springs, which is of course the center of evangelical movement, who were involved with the churches?

MJ: I can’t tell you how many ministers, pastors, priests I’ve had. It didn’t bother me, nothing surprised me. And when I saw that his calls were coming from Colorado Springs I figured he was involved with the church. But I was shocked that this guy, how huge he was, and taking such a risk.

MS: You felt that you had to do something before November 7th, if it was going to impact Amendment 43 and the elections.

MJ: And I don’t know if it’s going to change votes at all. I don’t know what the outcome will be, it coming out before the election but I Had to point out the hypocrisy, that here is a gentleman enjoying all the benefits of marriage, all the rights and doesn’t want two other people of the same sex who love each other to have those same rights and yet he can cheat on his wife.

MS: How did you go about reaching out to media?

MJ: Two months before it actually came out, I went to this reporter in Denver [at the NBC affiliate, Channel 9] who I respected, and investigative reporter who was well known. I went to her and immediately the station congregated around me. They go, “This is huge, we want this story!” But they go, “We need just a little bit more proof.” They actually wanted to see film of him and me together somehow. They wanted some video of some type. And I was prepared to do that. I had video cameras lined up. I was going to hide them in my apartment. But Ted wasn’t calling me after that last get together in August. My gut feeling was, with the Foley thing happening, and the election happening, he wanted to lay low.

MS: Did he always have an orgasm when he was with you?

MJ: Yes.

MS: And I guess if you were going to pursue this, to get more evidence, you were going to collect some of that DNA evidence. Was that part of the plan?

MJ: Boy, you hit it right on the head.

MS: But he all of a sudden wasn’t calling you, out of the blue? You would meet once per month, but how often did he call?

MJ: Once per month, when he wanted to meet.

MS: So August was the last time he called. You would of course need the opportunity in September or October to film him and have more evidence before the election.

MJ: Right, and it wasn’t happening. So I was listening to Peter Boyles, our big talk show host in Denver. And the subject was gay marriage. And I was hearing all the right wingers calling in and I was getting pissed. I knew I was sitting on this story – it was eating at me. I sent Peter an email and said, if you want a big story I have a big story for you. Well, two days later, they said, “Can you be on the radio at 6 a.m. tomorrow?”

I didn’t reveal Ted Haggard’s name. I wasn’t ready to reveal the name. All the callers were calling in and saying I just wanted publicity. Well, when Channel 9 heard me on the radio, they wanted the story so bad, they went down to Colorado Springs and they confronted Haggard, and then ran the story. That’s how it really broke.

MS: So they really are the ones who outed him, after you spoke on the radio about “a preacher.”

MJ: That’s right.

***

MS: Tell me about this: You’re having sexual encounters with him once a month. After about a year he just asks you about crystal meth?

MJ: He just goes, “Hey Mike, I have a question. What do you know about crystal meth?” I was a little bit surprised. I said, “I don’t care for it. I’ve tried it but I don’t care for it. But I have friends who do it and they think it enhances their sexual pleasure.” He goes, “Do you think you can get me some?” I told him I’ll see what I can do.

MS: And you hooked him up with somebody who could get him this drug. Then what? He would do it in your presence when he had sex with you?

MJ: Yes, he agreed it enhanced his pleasure and said that he used it when he had sex with his wife too.

MS: What did he get like after he took the crystal? How did it impact him?

MJ: I can’t get into his mind or his body. He didn’t act any differently. He seemed to be enjoying it. Definitely had a smile on his face.

MS: He said he was taking this when he had sex with his wife. Did he indicate he had trouble having sex with his wife? Did it allow him to have heterosexual sex more easily? Is he gay, bisexual, any ideas on that?

MJ: I really don’t know. I really think he is a gay man. When you’re in that business, you’ve got to put up a good front. I think he has enormously strong homosexual tendencies but he just told me the drug enhanced his pleasure with his wife. I don’t know if he even really was having sex with his wife, or just said that. I think part it too is that he was a very busy man, traveling all over the country and the world. I think he enjoyed the drug too because it kept him going.

***

MS: You spoke about a fantasy he told you, his sexual fantasy. Tell me about that?

MJ: This was the only time he ever spoke about something sexual other than being with me. He goes, “Mike do you know any young college guys” I said, “Well, I know a few, why? “He said, ‘I would love to get about 4 to 6 young college guys, about 18 to 22, I’d love to have group sex with them.’ I said, “Let me check around and see what I can do and see if I can organize that for you.” I never pursued it.

MS: What have you been hearing from people in response to what you’ve done?

MJ: Well, I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of phone calls coming in. Deluged, saying, “Thank you Mike. God you got balls!” A lot of thank yous. I have had one threatening phone call ? “You’re going to be so sorry for what you did. You’re going to get it.”

MS: Some people see you as a hero, others say, “He’s not a hero, he’s a prostitute.” What’s your reaction?

MJ: I don’t feel like a hero. I wasn’t trying to be a hero. I’m at the age of 49. I saw a lot of my friends going through hell in years past, where one of the partners would die and the other family would come in and say get out of the way, and just rape the house, and there was a lot of crying. I felt like this was a responsibility to my fellow gay brothers to do this. I’ve had some people say “You’re an immoral whore, bitch, fag.” But I’ve been called all those names all my life. So it’s not new. But I will tell you, when it finally broke, when he resigned, I have to be honest with you, I just broke down. I had so much emotion for so long.

MS: Do you feel other hustlers, like those in Washington DC, whose clients have been rightwing antigay politicians, should look to you like a role model and do the same thing?

MJ: I don’t think I should be a role model, but if I saw some politician out there bashing gays, yes, I think they should say something. But I would say, after going through this experience, I would say to them, just make sure you are able to prove it! [laughs]

Via AmericaBlog.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• All the President’s (gay) men
• Gay for God

All the President’s (gay) men

Well, two of them at least. Okay, so we don’t know for sure that meth-curious Pastor Ted is a bona fide Friend of Dorothy but, you know… Is it at all usual for evangelical gay-bashers to receive massages from gay escorts? I don’t remember the nuns telling me about that part of the Bible so Pastor Ted leaves us to connect the dots.

Teen-botherer Mark Foley to the right of The Decider. To the left is FEMA director Michael “heckuva job Brownie” Brown who botched the rescue of New Orleans post-Katrina. With friends like these…

…and these… If the President needs any crystal meth (and given the polls for Tuesday’s election, he might require some stimulants soon), he knows who to ask.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Gay for God
• The election Google Bomb
• Why doesn’t America believe in evolution?

Gay for God

So, another week, another gay sex scandal in America… Schadenfreude levels are going through the roof with all this happening days before a critical midterm election. Latest culprit is Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals who yesterday was denying that he paid for sex with a male escort and bought drugs (yet he still resigned; er, okay…) but now seems to be fessing up, perhaps prompted by incriminating voicemails being passed to the press.

Pastor Ted claims to have the ear of the White House and has been very vocal in the past about the iniquities of gay sex. Here’s a random sample from the NAE website:

May 17, 2004

A Special Message From Pastor Ted Haggard, President

Today, homosexual couples are marrying in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The crisis concerning marriage is now a real and present danger to our society. Join with the National Association of Evangelicals for an important 90-minute Church Communication Network (CCN) broadcast this Sunday evening, May 23rd, 6:00-7:30 PM Mountain Daylight Time. Hear some of the nation’s leading experts on the crisis of homosexual marriage and its detrimental impact on America’s families — Dr. James Dobson, Chuck Colson, Bishop Wellington Boone and Tony Perkins — as they inform, educate, and call the Church to action.

Business-as-usual, in the world of the god-botherers, and there’s more of the same drivel here. But Pastor Ted has gone beyond mere preaching in the past, as this eye-popping Harper’s article reveals:

Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil’s plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings.

Seems like the sinful gay men may have done some inviting of their own. Then there’s this:

He called the evil forces that dominated Colorado Springs—and every other metropolitan area in the country—”Control.”

Sometimes, he says, Control would call him late on Saturday night, threatening to kill him. “Any more impertinence out of you, Ted Haggard,” he claims Control once told him, “and there will be unrelenting pandemonium in this city.”

This may be coincidence, but any reader of William Burroughs’ work will tell you that Burroughs patented the term “Control” as a name for abstract forces (human or otherwise) attempting to dominate the world. Burroughs’ work, of course, contains a lot of gay sex, often used as a means of combating that same Control.

The Harper’s article has a great description of Haggard’s World Prayer Center:

The angel’s pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid out in muted red, white, and blue-black stone. Each point directs the eye to a contemporary painting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in various states of undress. My favorite is The Vessel, by Thomas Blackshear (above), a major figure in the evangelical-art world. Here in the World Prayer Center is a print of The Vessel, a tall, vertical panel of two nude, ample-breasted, white female angels team-pouring an urn of honey onto the shaved head of a naked, olive-skinned man below. The honey drips down over his slab-like pecs and his six-pack abs into the eponymous vessel, which he holds in front of his crotch. But the vessel can’t handle that much honey, so the sweetness oozes over the edges and spills down yet another level, presumably onto our heads, drenching us in golden, godly love. Part of what makes Blackshear’s work so compelling is precisely its unabashed eroticism; it aims to turn you on, and then to turn that passion toward Jesus.

In fairness to the artist, I think that’s supposed to be annointing oil they’re pouring. Blackshear’s paintings are certainly preferable to the dreadful figurines on his site, the kind of things that give kitsch a bad name. His eroticism is of the unspecified variety that one sees in Frank Frazetta’s work and which was also present in the fascist sculptures that Arno Breker produced for the Nazis. Breker was gay but Hitler managed to overlook that inconvenience, just as the evangelicals probably overlook the ambiguous qualities in Blackshear’s paintings. As Kenneth Clark says in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, all nude art is erotic. Or maybe that’s just “Control” speaking through us lousy perverts?

To return to Pastor Ted, I’m curious now to see how the “gay is a lifestyle choice” contingent deal with this one. The wingnuts who deny a biological component to gay attraction are going to have to accept that their noble leader willingly entered into a sinful relationship rather than being driven there by even the slightest genetic impulse. In Colorado at the moment it seems that Control has the upper hand.

Update: latest news is that Pastor Ted bought crystal meth (an addictive compound very popular among gay men when used during sex) out of curiosity. More than once. At $100 a shot. That’s an expensive curiosity habit you have there, Ted. Oh and the escort gave him a massage but they didn’t have sex, no sir. The current Congressman for Colorado is the egregious Marilyn Musgrave, a woman who recently made Rolling Stone‘s list of “10 Worst Congressmen“, and “an evangelical Christian who married her Bible-camp sweetheart”. Marilyn is down on the gay in a big way:

Once in Congress, Musgrave introduced a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriage — which she calls “the most important issue that we face today” — nearly a year before a Massachusetts court approved civil unions. “She doesn’t like the idea of one gay person,” says Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts. “So obviously the idea of two of us hanging out makes her very unhappy.” For her opposition to gay marriage — as well as her push to legalize concealed weapons — Musgrave received an endorsement from the KKK in May.

I wonder what she has to say about Pastor Ted’s curiosities?

And there’s more from the party of gay hate, with the news that the Republican National Committee has accepted donations from the president of a gay porn distribution company, Marina Pacific Distributors. I think this is what’s called sending a confusing message to the voters. Coming next (as it were), President Bush is caught being fellated by a chimpanzee in the Oval Office. Maybe.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The election Google Bomb
• Why doesn’t America believe in evolution?

The birds and the bees (and the higher primates)

The Natural History Museum of Oslo University has opened an exhibition dedicated to homosexuality in the animal kingdom.

Today we know that homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world. Not only short-lived sexual relationships, but even long-lasting partnerships; partnerships that may last a lifetime.

The exhibit puts on display a small selection among the more than 1500 species where homosexuality have been observed. This fascinating story of the animals’ secret life is told by means of models, photos, texts and specimens. The visitor will be confronted with all sorts of creatures from tiny insects to enormous spermwhales.

How can we know that an animal is homosexual? How can homosexual behaviour be consistent with what we have learned about evolution and Darwinism?

Sadly, most museums have no traditions for airing difficult, concealed, and possibly controversial questions. Homosexuality is certainly such a question. We feel confident that a greater understanding of how extensive and common this behaviour is among animals, will help to de-mystify homosexuality among people. At least, we hope to reject the all too well known argument that homosexual behaviour is a crime against nature.

Naturally (ahem), this has attracted the ire of the usual god-botherers who are happy to ignore inconvenient Scriptural declarations about loving your neighbour when sending the museum directors hate mail. Unfortunately for the bigots, evidence about homosexuality being very much a part of the natural world continues to mount (pardon the pun again…), as shown in an article in US science magazine, Seed, earlier this year. That won’t convince the American (and other) Talibans, of course, but then if it was up to them we’d still be burning witches and thinking that the sun orbited the earth.