Karl Rove’s closest adviser on how to appeal to conservative Catholics quit his campaign advisory role a while back, after a previous instance of sexual harassment came to light. Now he’s quitting the hard-right Catholic magazine, Crisis, after pressure from columnists and the magazine’s board. Money quote:
In addition, specific accusations of more recent sexual misconduct had come to the board’s attention, one scholar said. “This was not about one incident 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s surprising it was held down as long as it was. I haven’t gone out of my way to track Deal Hudson’s improprieties – I could be doing nothing else. But you began to wonder after a while if they are true.”
None of this would be salient, in my view, if Hudson hadn’t gone out of his way to deny any right to privacy for public figures, hadn’t campaigned furiously against gay rights, and wasn’t an adamant defender of the strictest Catholic teachings about sex. It confirms my own anecdotal experience, however: some who are the most obsessed with others’ sex lives often have issues themselves. Speaking of which …
DEFENSIVE CROUCH: Paul Crouch is a big deal in the evangelical world. He’s the president and on-air star of Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest “Christian” broadcaster, and he’s also gay, according to a man who says he slept with him, Enoch Lonnie Ford. Ford claims he was sexually harassed by Crouch and was paid off for keeping quiet in 1998. That deal has now apparently unraveled. More details are emerging in the LA Times:
After checking out of the hotel, Ford said, Crouch took him to a TBN-owned cabin near Lake Arrowhead. It was there, Ford said, that Crouch first had sex with him. “I did it because I didn’t know if this man is going to throw me straight out of that cabin,” Ford said. “And I didn’t want to lose my job. I was going to be in trouble if I said no.”
The next morning, Ford said, Crouch read a Bible passage to him in an attempt to reassure him about the night before. The passage, Proverbs 6:16-19, details seven “detestable” attitudes and acts in God’s eyes.
Ford said Crouch told him that because homosexuality wasn’t listed, the Lord wasn’t worried about what they had done. Still, Ford said, Crouch warned him to keep the encounter quiet “because people wouldn’t understand.”
At this point, it’s worth recalling that the two leading spokesmen for the “ex-gay” movement have also been exposed as subsequently seeking gay sex, and that Pat Robertson’s congressman, Ed Schrock, who wanted to make the military’s anti-gay discrimination even more stringent, was also gay.
The Dish 