How About Outing an Anti?

Hop back in a Newtonian sense to observe this little world. From there, the sexual orientation of anyone should not matter at all. One can consider only whether people are decent, whether they obey the only real law of human interaction — if something is hateful to you, do not do it to another.

Yet grinding in the nits and grits of same-sex marriage and sexual-orientation-related politics and polemics, does that abrasion 1) make you curious about what drives someone's homophobia, or 2) make you willing to see an anti outed as gay?

Two popular bloggers joined to call for information about nine noted anti-gay, anti-same-sex-marriage black ministers. The bloggers are black and gay, one male and one female.

Apparently they have no evidence yet that any of the nine is a practicing or sublimated homosexual. However, they ask the questions based in sound and repeatable scientific research, which has bled over into stereotype and cliché. Does the guy who screams the loudest about how disgusting and immoral gays are have a homosexual past or present? Is his distancing himself from homosexuals a form of self-loathing?

Of course, you can be a racist or homophobe or any type of xenophobe without being the object of your hate and derision. And yet...

The bloggers are Keith Boykin and Jasmyne Cannick. Neither is particularly subtle and both seem out of patience with any man of the cloth who would be so unChristian as to damn homosexual congregants and try to punish them with laws and amendments.

The pair picked the most outrageous bigots. (Boston's own Bishop Gilbert Thompson does not fall to the level of the Gang of Nine.) The nasty nonet includes:

• Bishop T.D. Jakes, Potter's House, South Dallas
• The Rev. Willie Wilson, Union Temple Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.
• The Rev. Gregory Daniels, Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago
• Bishop Charles Blake, West Angeles Church Of God In Christ, Los Angeles
• The Rev. Jess Lee Peterson, Los Angeles' Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny (BOND)
• Bishop Eddie Long, New Birth Baptist Ministry, Atlanta
• Bishop Noel Jones, City of Refuge Church, Gardena (outside Los Angeles)
• Bishop Paul Morton, Full Gospel Baptist Church, New Orleans
• Donnie McClurkin, Perfecting Faith Church, New York

You can see their qualifications of hateful comments in a Bay Windows article here. You can pick one from the bloggers' work to see not only their nature, but the many pages of responses. Check the T.D. Jakes profile. Be sure to page down to the comments.

So, if they are hateful hypocrites, would it be meaningful or useful to know whether they are gay? Judging from fundy and extreme right-wing reactions to exposed gay homophobes and moralizing adulterers that seem common in Reagan/Bushville, they would not lose many supporters politically.

Yet you must wonder what that would do to their very lucrative ministries. Would the amens and other responses stop and would the collections dwindle if that venality were known?