Jeez Jon

Where Jon Goes After The Log Cabin Republicans

First Rev. Ted Haggard  denies the claims against him, and then America's Number 1 Evangelical admits to buying and giving crystal meth to a gay prostitute and also receiving a massage from the hustler as well.  Now Rev. Haggard  says that he and the man-ho "did not have sex."  I'm sure the two of them knitted a sweater or something.  What really just angers me about this is that Rev. Haggard was pushing for a same-sex marriage ban in Colorado, his home state, while fraternizing with a male prostitute on the "down low".  Hypocrite, thy name is Haggard. 

For those unfamiliar, Rev. Ted Haggard is one of the most prominent Evangelical Christians in the country, formerly the head of the 14,000 member New Life Church.  He and his church are quite politically active for their respective causes (anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, intelligent design, etc.)

Combine this mess with the Mark Foley scandal and suddenly you see this other side of conservative Republicans in this country.  Mark Foley is gay, and has come out of the closet because of his scandal, and now Rev. Haggard has done an about-face on the claims against him, saying that he did meet up with this prostitute.  While what Foley is accused of is not due to his homosexuality (preying on below-age-of-consent-teenagers is definitely creepy and it would be as creepy if he has done it to female pages), the fact that there was a seemingly active campaign to cover it up really shows that the Republicans really don't even want to consider themselves gay until there is no further way to dispute it.  In both cases, Foley and Rev. Haggard only admitted what they did  when they were backed into a corner they've painted themselves into. the gay Republican will then finally admit it.  It's obviously something they consider shameful -- otherwise,  why not be open about it? 

Here's something I just don't understand.  Why be a Republican nowadays when you are gay?  Back in the day, Republicans stood for smaller government, a strong defense, less taxes and empowering the individual.  The Libertarians in the party could seriously care less if you were gay or not -- they didn't consider it their business.  Once the Religious Right swooped into the GOP in the 80's, that was suddenly turned around.  The big rallying cry in 2004 was to stop two guys getting the right to file a joint tax return, and it worked.  Their party platform in both 2000 and 2004 both said that they were against gay marriage and also against a lot of gay rights legislation.  Why be a part of a party that is using you as its main boogeyman?  Why be a part of a party that uses the spectre of you and your loved one wanting to be able to visit each other in the hospital if one of you is ill as a sign for the downfall of Western Civilization?  Why be a part of a party that doesn't want you to have the same rights as everyone else solely based on the gender of your loved one?  I mean, do tax breaks for the wealthy outweigh respect for you and your relationship?  Does the concept of a right to privacy seem lesser to privatizing Social Security?  I mean, really, I want to know.

The situations with both Mark Foley and Rev. Haggard just show that the Republican party is okay with gays in their ranks, as long as they don't talk about being gay, don't advertise being gay, don't support any gay causes, and don't stand up for themselves and demonstrate a backbone.  For a party that claims to have a big tent, they make sure it's a quite one.

Food, Glorious, Food

During my now downtime of lovely unemployment, I've been sleeping about 8 hours a night, going to the gym 4 to 5 days a week, and I've been eating smaller meals with lots of natural fiber.  And a lot of salads.  So, it really should not have come to my surprise that I've lost 7 pounds since returning from Italy.  Needlessy to say, I was happily stunned.   I'm going to continue this trek, and try to see if I can hit my #1 of my 101 in 1001 of losing 20 pounds and keeping them off for two months.  Fingers crossed.

In other food related business, last Thursday, I spent 8 hours sitting in my living room, going through our archived paperwork, throwing out and shredding anything older than 7 years (and a lot of checks my credit card companies keep sending me... not to mention credit card offers).  Realizing that just sitting there for 8 hours without a semblence of distraction would be way too reminiscent of my days o' temping, I turned on the TV in search of something to help ease my mind.  I wanted something that I can watch and keep me interested but not something I had to be glued to, since I was going to be running the shredder most of the day.  Well, as always, Bravo comes to my rescue.  They ran a marathon of the first season of Top Chef, from the same production company that does my fave reality show, Project Runway.  While there are some similarities in style and structure, Top Chef doesn't come across like Runway knockoff I had thought it would be.  Both shows do a great job of casting -- the contestants on both really seem like a talented (to varying degrees) group of people who genuinely love their respective professions.  Chef does have some very interesting challenges, ranging from dishes that have to be microwaved to putting together a meal consisting of snails and American Cheese.  Combine this show with the good amount of Food Network that I tend to casually watch and boom, I'm surrounded by an almost constant need to snack.  Thankfully, Halloween is now behind us, as is the bag of snack sized Twix I had for the Treat-or-Treaters who never showed up.