The Rev. Michael Penland flushed his marriage and career down a dirty public toilet by soliciting sex from an undercover police officer while in a public park. I am not too clear as to why it is illegal to ask somebody to have sex if the intended place for the hook up is a private residence. Call me a rabid libertarian if you will, but it really is Penland's own business if he wants to do guys back at his house. Anyway, Penland is married, has kids, and is a youth pastor down in Boca Raton. He admits to five years of secret homosexual affairs. His church has placed him on suspension.
I normally do not report of the odd pastor who likes to play with the boys. But there is an undertone to the story that I do not like. It seems people are concerned because he is a youth pastor. In the last year or so I've reported on many child predictors, but I cannot remember one that was cruising parks for gay sex. I do not think there is a link between adult consensual homosexual sex and child sexual abuse. Penland has a sex addiction problem, or he has been living a lie or both. The whole "danger to children" concern appears to be overblown.
One last thing. Based on his picture, my gadar simply screams gay.
Dear Deep Thoughts:
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on many points...
God Bless!
Julian
www.ijulian.blogspot.com
P.S.
When God calls on you, he accepts you as you are...
Sexually repressed clergymen have implanted themselves deep inside the most religious spheres and it seeems they are all spilling out simultaneously in recent years.
ReplyDeletePerhaps there is a correlation between sex-crimes committed by the elect of God and the harsh stance dogmatic religion takes on sex outside of marriage. I wonder...
Yes, Gaydar is definitely screaming red.
ReplyDeleteI would say, why do so many devoutly religious have weird hangups like secret homosexuality etc, but I suppose there are LOTS of homosexual people NOT devoutly religious, so that kind of defeats my first reaction. A lot of times however when people lose their marbles they often have religious grandiosities, probably because that part of the brain has something to do with certain disorders. Just like how many lesbians (a la my sister) look similar, and a lot of gay people have that "gay man" look about them... I wonder if there is some sort of connection like that with certain religious folk. I know certain personality types usually cluster (math & science lovers, versus language and humanitarian types) and some of those personalities are more prone to being religious than others. So I wonder if the personality types usually gravitating towards religions have some kind of OTHER things in common.
My brother is an evangelical (he must have been hatched from an egg or something, I'm truly the first child) and everyone thinks he is gay. He def has some gaydars going off...