Comments on: Celibate Gay Pastor Outed

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 02:15:31 +0000

“Man Struggles with Sin, Press Alarmed” is good.

By: Phil W

Phil W — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 02:53:53 +0000

Maybe “Journalist Betrays Pastor’s Confidence” or “Hunting for Hypocrites” or “Man Struggles with Sin, Press Alarmed.”

Of course, there are uninformative titles like “This Stinks,” but I don’t like those.

By: Adam Greenwood

Adam Greenwood — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:02:35 +0000

What would you suggest for a succint, informative title that isn’t gay?

By: Phil W

Phil W — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 16:01:21 +0000

I chaff at your title. I think it spotlights the real problem in this event: identity politics. I doubt the pastor would say he is gay, because that defines his being. I’m not willing to allow that anyone who struggles against or flirts with same-sex attraction is gay. He is a man in a hypersexualized society. He is a fallen man who sins, despite being redeemed from that sin. And maybe this man struggles with homosexuality to the extent that he believes it accurate to label himself a gay man, like alcoholics and addicts find helpful, but I won’t put that label on him. He is a fellow believer, regardless his struggles.

By: John Mansfield

John Mansfield — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:20:34 +0000

A degree of sociopathology is an ingredient of journalism. I recall a photojournalist writing of her profession something along the lines that “A journalist will knock on the door and ask a mother for her reaction to her son’s death on the way to school that morning. A photojournalist’s task is even ruder. He has to snap the picture of her weeping.”

I have a really great story about the death fifty years ago of someone related to me. I tell it sometimes in small settings, because it’s a good story. I asked my aunts to repeat the story to me a few years ago, so I could have the details right. It was a rather emotional thing for them. I could never present the story in a public setting because it’s not my story, and I don’t want to ask the deceased’s widow and children for permission to tell it. My scruples in the matter, such as they are, may be a small loss for the world, because it’s a really good story.

By: Vader

Vader — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:25:58 +0000

Can’t say I’ve broken any oaths, but I’ve broken a vow or two, and it’s never turned out well for me. Things like, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, my my right hand be cut off by my own son with a lightsaber”, or something like that.

I find the seeming indifference of the journaloid to the anguish he’s inflicting on the pastor disturbing. Perhaps he’s a gay activist as well as a journaloid; I sense much anger in the gay activists I’ve encountered online, and anger leads to hate, and hate to much sorrow. If not, if he’s cynically exploiting the man to get the story, then I sense some degree of sociopathology.