"The Truth About Why This Is A 'Gay Interest' Story..."

From The Advocate

Pastor Had Sex With Teens to Make Them Straight

Brent Giroeux is facing 60 counts of suspected sexual exploitation for allegedly having sex with numerous teenage boys while praying to rid them of 'homosexual urges.'

This news report is from 2012

This week, the story of Brent Giroeux, a married father of four accused of sexually abusing boys as a "youth pastor" in a Council Bluffs, Iowa church has come to light.  Interestingly, Giroeux turned himself in to police back in 2011 when his first victims came forward and reported the abuse to the church's pastor who encouraged Giroeux to confess to his crimes, but the story has only just gained the attention of the national news media.

Now that the story is in the media, I've noticed that this story has has received a lot of coverage in gay media blogs and news sites and that made me wonder about why this is true.  Afterall, most gay people would denounce this man and proclaim that he's not "gay" but rather, a pedophile criminal.  And while that's the view of this man that I'd like to take myself, I also have to say, I believe he's gay too.  And that's why I believe that this is a 'gay interest' story.

Anti-gay homophobes love to conflate pedophilia with homosexuality, and they point to cases like this one as a "smoking gun" that proves their false claims about us.  And I believe that's one reason why "we" take note of stories like this...

Now of course the truth of the matter is that pedophiles are far more likely to be heterosexual than homosexual, but those cases tend to not get the damning coverage of situations like this one. But I also think there's another reason that cases like this one become 'gay interest' stories, and that reason is that perhaps secretly or even subconsciously, many of us can understand (or suspect we do) what motivated a man like Brent Giroeux to do the horrible things that he's admitted to.

Many of us take years (and some even decades) to recognize and accept the immutable nature of our sexual orientation. And many of us (including me) at some point in our lives turn to the false haven of religion as a means of denying the truth of our hearts. I think the unspoken recognition of this "self-loathing denial phenomenon" is why this story is being covered by so many "gay media" sites. And I'm struck by the fact that although it's being covered by "us", I have yet to read any of "our" authors explain why (although in comments many of us allude to the points I'm making here).  I think what this story is really about, beyond the crime of child sexual abuse is the evil of religiosity and ignorance.

I believe that as long as "religion(s)" refuses to accept that some people are gay and that it's the "truth" of our creation and they promote hatred and proclaim the very essence and nature of person is evil because of the sex of the person they feel a natural attraction to, there will continue to be stories like this one. Hatred, especially when it's internalized is a confusing force that manifests itself in fear and self-loathing and that in turn drives people to secretly express their true nature in the same acts that they rail and preach against and that's what I believe has happened here.

Fear eats the soul and it destroys the conscience and drives men to heinous and horrible acts of gratuitous evil all in the name of denial.  That's why this is a 'gay interest' story and that's why religious hatred is such a pervasive force for evil.  And that's why I believe that as a gay man you bothered to read this and perhaps agreed with me.

"Fear Eats the Soul"