Could Gay Lt. Gov Rumors Be Playing in Favor of Cheating SC Governor?
The bombshell revelation that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford had disappeared to Argentina for a rendezvous with an extramarital romantic interest has failed to elicit calls fro the governor’s resignation from the state’s top officials-in part due to Bauer’s politics, though another factor may also be at work: rumors that the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer, is gay.
Bauer’s sexuality has been a topic of speculation before, most recently when openly lesbian South Carolina politician Linda Ketner, a failed candidate for one of the state’s congressional seats, “outed” several state officials, including Bauer, igniting a controversy about airing and repeating such allegations publicly. See Could Gay Lt. Gov Rumors Be Playing in Favor of Cheating SC Governor?
EDGE Boston
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Could Gay Lt. Gov Rumors Be Playing in Favor of Cheating SC Governor?
The bombshell revelation that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford had disappeared to Argentina for a rendezvous with an extramarital romantic interest has failed to elicit calls fro the governor’s resignation from the state’s top officials-in part due to Bauer’s politics, though another factor may also be at work: rumors that the state’s Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer, is gay.
Bauer’s sexuality has been a topic of speculation before, most recently when openly lesbian South Carolina politician Linda Ketner, a failed candidate for one of the state’s congressional seats, “outed” several state officials, including Bauer, igniting a controversy about airing and repeating such allegations publicly. See Could Gay Lt. Gov Rumors Be Playing in Favor of Cheating SC Governor?
EDGE Boston
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The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?
Last November, Jay Pimentel began hearing that people in his neighborhood were receiving letters about him. Pimentel lives in Alameda, Calif., a small, liberal-leaning community hanging off Oakland into the San Francisco Bay. Pimentel, who is a Mormon, had supported Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. And that made him a target. “Dear Neighbor,” the letter began, “Our neighbors, Colleen and Jay Pimentel” — and it gave their address — “contributed $1,500.00 to the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. NEIGHBORS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THEIR NEIGHBORS’ CHOICES.” The note accused the Pimentels of “obsessing about same-sex marriage.” It listed a variety of local causes that recipients should support — “unlike the Pimentels.”
Pimentel, a lawyer and a lay leader in the small Mormon congregation in Alameda, is markedly even-keeled. Yet the poison-pen note still steams him, even though in May the California Supreme Court validated Prop 8 as constitutional. He is bothered less by the revelation of his monetary contribution, which he stands by, than the fact that the letter’s author didn’t bother to find out that every other Saturday for 15 years, he or someone else from Alameda’s 184-member Mormon ward has delivered a truckload of hot meals to the Midway Shelter for Abused and Homeless Women and Children — one of the organizations the Pimentels allegedly wouldn’t support. “The church does a lot of things in the community we don’t issue press releases about,” he says. “And when people criticize us, we often just take it on the chin. I guess you could say I’m not satisfied with the way we’re seen.”
Across the country, that’s the dilemma facing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With 13 million members worldwide (by its own count), the LDS is the fourth largest church in the country, the richest per capita and one of the fastest-growing abroad. The body has become a mainstream force, counting among its flock political heavyweights like former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid, businesspeople like the Marriotts and entertainers like Glenn Beck and Twilight novelist Stephenie Meyer. The passage of Prop 8 was the church’s latest display of its power: individual Mormons contributed half of the proposition’s $40 million war chest despite constituting only 2% of California’s population. LDS spokesman Michael Otterson says, “This is a moment of emergence.”
See The Church and Gay Marriage: Are Mormons Misunderstood?
TIME
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Gay Filipino professor wins political asylum after revealing a 30-year secret of sexual abuse
After his visitor’s visa expired in 2006, Philip Belarmino, an English professor from the Philippines, consulted a San Francisco attorney. He wanted to see if he could stay longer to be with his parents and sister who are permanent residents in the Bay Area. That bureaucratic immigration path led instead to revelation of a stunning personal secret, recounted during an emotional testimony in an immigration courtroom in San Francisco last month: When he was 9, 11 and 16, Belarmino said he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by other boys. Recounting the abuse, said the 43-year Bay Area resident, was “like forever. It was like re-entering a harrowing, hellish experience.” He feared a forced return to the Philippines, “of being hurled back in the world of cruelty.” That wrenching testimony convinced Judge Loreto Geisse to grant Belarmino political asylum in the United States, ending for now the government’s effort to deport him. The Department of Justice, which has until June 22 to appeal, could not be reached for comment Monday. Political asylum in the United States for gays and lesbians who fear persecution if returned to their home countries is not new and no one knows how many such cases are granted each year. Immigration Equality, a New York City group that advocates for gay and lesbian immigrant rights, won 55 similar cases last year.
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Gay mayor’s illicit love is talk of conservative Texas
The small Texan city of San Angelo has been turned upside down by one of the most unusual sex scandals ever to impact on American political life.
Joseph Lown, the popular mayor, suddenly resigned last week after revealing he had fallen madly in love with an illegal immigrant. That was the first revelation; the second was that his new partner was another man.
Not surprisingly the news has become the talk of Texas. In the socially conservative and solidly Republican state, gay marriage and illegal immigration are probably the two hottest potatoes in town.
Perhaps, then, it was no wonder that Lown announced the end of his career from Mexico, where he had fled with his new boyfriend and from where he could mourn the end of an otherwise successful political career.
The news came as a bombshell. Lown, 32, had just won a fourth term with 89 per cent of the vote. He was immensely popular after having worked long hours to fix the city’s infrastructure and attending hundreds of community meetings.
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Letter from Barack Obama went Unused by ‘No on Prop 8′ Campaign
It’s hard to believe things could get worse for the bungled “No on Prop 8″ campaign in hindsight, but it appears they have. Over the weekend, fury re-erupted across the gay blogosphere following a report on the recent “No on 8″ Town Hall in the Bay Area Reporter. The fury is centered around a letter to the Alice B. Toklas club from Barack Obama expressing the candidate’s disapproval of Proposition 8. It was a letter that was never used. Revelations emerged from the meeting about the decision not to use the letter: See
Letter from Barack Obama went Unused by ‘No on Prop 8′ Campaign
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Is your dog gay? Oprah’s best friend Gayle King says her dog is …
On Friday’s episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show when Oprah was introducing the world to her new cocker spaniel puppy, Sadie, Oprah’s best friend Gayle King had a revelation of her own: her 14 year-old brown cocker spaniel Spencer is gay. Specifically, King said that her dog was “gay and deaf.”
“How do you know that your dog’s gay?” asked guest co-host Mark Consuelos, looking puzzled.
“He’s very girly,” explained King. “He’s very, very girly. There’s no doubt.”
“And we mean that in the best way,” Oprah added.
See Is your dog gay? Oprah’s best friend Gayle King says her dog is …
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Sympathy for the Devil: Why We Should Show Some Compassion for Ted Haggard
By Michael Shermer
I just watched the HBO documentary film, “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” produced by Alexandra Pelosi (which the media seem curiously intent on identifying not as a filmmaker but as the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House). The film is a follow-up to her 2007 film “Friends of God,” in which Haggard was prominently featured just before his downfall from revelations that he had homosexual relations with a male prostitute, with whom he also did methamphetamine. And all this happened right in the middle of the political debate about gay marriage, in which Haggard condemned homosexuality as an abomination and gay marriage as a sin that should never be legalized.
Now, I enjoy roasting a hypocrite as much as the next person, and I sat down to watch Pelosi’s film sharpening my typing fingers in preparation for slicing this evangelical hypocrite to pieces, especially after just watching him on Larry King Live, in which he failed to apologize to gays for condemning the very “lifestyle choice” he also presumably made. (In his Christian worldview homosexuality is a choice–a bad choice, a sinful choice, but a choice nonetheless). But I came away feeling some compassion for Ted Haggard, sympathy for the devil as it were. I don’t know if Pelosi intended her film to have this effect–I suspect not from her off-camera comments in the film as she follows the fallen preacher around Phoenix selling insurance door-to-door and bumming rooms off friends at which his family can live. But given what we know about the power of belief, and the fact that this man devoted his entire life and essence to being an Evangelical Christian and all that stands for–which is a lot when you are the titular head of the 30 million-strong National Association of Evangelicals–what a striking conflict his life has been (and by all accounts still is).
By now, most of us know that homosexuality is not a “choice,” any more than heterosexuality is a choice. Asking a gay person “When did you choose to become gay?” makes about as much sense as asking a straight person “When did you choose to become straight?” The answer is the same: “Uh? I didn’t choose. I’ve always felt this way.” Right, and all the evidence from biology, psychology, and behavior genetics (twin studies) points to the fact that most people are born straight, some people are born gay, and some are even born bisexual, and that’s just the way it is. In a large population (and six billion members of a large mammalian species certainly counts) with considerable variation in most characteristics, it is inevitable that even something as seemingly straightforward (if you’ll pardon the pun) as sexuality will likely show variations on that central theme.
See sympathy for the Devil, Compassion for Ted Haggard
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More gay sex accusations against Haggard
(Denver, Colorado) Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s former church has disclosed that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard – a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.
Brady Boyd, who …
Amid Sex Scandal, Portland’s Gay Mayor Asked To Resign
Portland’s openly gay mayor, Sam Adams, was asked to resign by a representative from the Portland Police Association over the revelation that he covered up a sexual affair with a teenage boy during his mayoral campaign.
Adams, 45, humbled himself and asked for forgiveness at a Monday press conference, where he admitted that his long-standing denial of having a sexual relationship with 18-year-old Beau Breedlove was not true.
“I want to apologize to the people of Portland for my dishonesty,” Adams said. “I made a mistake. This was clearly an error. I clearly messed this one one up.”
A representative from the Portland Police Association asked for Adams to resign, saying that his actions had left him at risk of “blackmail,” reports The Oregonian.
“Had they attempted to blackmail me, I would have taken the appropriate steps,” Adams responded.
Rumors of the affair surfaced in 2007 during the mayoral campaign. Adams’ long-standing response has been to dismiss those reports as a “nasty smear.”
In a Thursday interview with a reporter from the Willamette Week, the mayor was confronted with evidence the newspaper had gathered over several months concerning the affair, including statements from several of Breedlove’s friends who said the young man had confided in them that the two shared an intimate relationship. Adams remained steadfast in his denial.
See Amid Sex Scandal, Portland’s Gay Mayor Asked To Resign
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