Homo Irony
You may remember from not long ago the story about the arrest in Oklahoma of one "Reverend" Lonnie Latham, a fundamentalist, homophobic minister who was picked up on soliciting charges after he asked an undercover cop back to his place for oral sex. He claimed he just wanted to give "pastoral comfort" to conflicted homosexuals.
Well, now we have the ACLU telling
…an Oklahoma city judge Wednesday that a pastor who frequently speaks out against homosexuality and was arrested last week for propositioning a male police officer was charged in violation of the Supreme Court's ruling on gay sex.
We of the gay persuasion are quite familiar with these techniques of police entrapment, one of the few holdovers from an earlier golden age when police routinely harrassed and intimidated gay people at social venues like bars and dance halls — recall the tinder box that was the Stonewall Inn. Doing a sweep to pick up some homos is still a sure electorate-pleaser for many a sheriff that has barely abated despite the Supreme Court's ruling a few years back that laws restricting private, consensual acts were unconstitutional. That really bothered a lot of people.
One's first, instant reaction to this story about "Rev" Latham is to wonder what the ACLU is doing to mess up this guy's prosectution. Homosexuals are very good at schadenfreude, and we always enjoy having the hypocritical homophobes arrested under the laws they use to persecute us, even though we believe the laws should otherwise be done away with.
So, maybe that's the beauty of the ACLU's irony in joining this case. In a moment of calm thought, one has to agree that laws like those under which the "reverend" was arrested have to go. How charming, then, that the "reverend" himself might be the agent for abolishing that very law in favor of which the "reverend" mightily thumped his bible until recently. Sweet.
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on Friday, 3 February 2006 at 03.45
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"Pastoral comfort," huh? I suppose he figured being honest enough to admit he's a sick puppy might hurt his fundamentalist pastor image. Whereas being on the prowl for oral sex with a stranger would not.
The sick part, of course, refers to his little inconsistency between casting off on homosexuals while seeking to sastisfy a craving for homosexual sex acts, whatever his basic orientation.
This whole thing is nutty. Red state or not, I'm sure they're acquainted with the First Amendment in Oklahome. Assuming the police officer was of legal age, Latham was just exercising his right of free speech.