Severed Heads & Severed Pastors

How nice it would be to say that the big news this week was a whoppingly joyful Hallowe’en where legions of kids roamed the neighborhoods scoring enough candy to last them for … days.

Alas, we only had twenty-seven of the devils and ended up with a freezerful of enough candy to last me for … weeks.

That’s not to say that scary things didn’t happen this week.

The military, for example, announced that seven more U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday, all of them in roadside bomb and sniper attacks. Along with that, 83 Iraqi bodies were found with wrists and ankles bound – executed with no word as to who or what was being avenged. Speaking of Hallowe’en, a severed head was also found, and, according to the Reuters news service, at “least nine other Iraqis died in violence on Friday, including a freelance journalist, a singer, a taxi driver, and a gas station employee.”

Meanwhile (there’s always a meanwhile), the Republicans have another cross to bear in that one of their evangelical boys, the Reverend Ted Haggard, admitted that he bought some methamphetamine from a prostitute. He didn’t use it, though. He decided it was wrong and threw it away.

Unfortunately the prostitute, one Michael Jones, sees things a bit differently, saying that he and Mr. Haggard had a sexual affair lasting several months. What apparently rubbed Mr. Jones the wrong way (no pun intended), was the very public support of Mr. Haggard for Colorado’s Amendment 43 defining marriage as a relationship between only a man and a woman.

True enough, bashing gays while you yourself are taking it up various orifices might seem a bit inconsistent, although not necessarily. We’ve long promoted such a poisonous, anti-gay atmosphere in this country that the experience of serious self-hatred by gays is not exactly an unusual phenomenon.

What was most exciting on the news last night, however, was the mention that Haggard had been spiritual adviser to the First Bush and – look! – here’s a picture of them standing together and smiling.

No mention was made of the First Bush’s sexual orientation.

(from Cherub: An Iraqi War Diary, C.2006, G. K. Wuori, Associated Press Photo)