Here are some of the stalwart warriors of the religious fundamentalist movement who were themselves enjoying the fleshly pleasures of life, while telling others to abstain.
James Bakker:
Remember him? He was banging some church secretary back in the 80′s while building his tv empire with his wife, Tammy Faye.
Jimmy Swaggart:
I am sure you remember him. Again, had a tv empire of fire and brimstone evangelical Christianity, until it turned out he enjoyed the services of prostitutes. Was caught a number of times too with them, after repenting. Oh yeah, he enjoyed porn too.
Fr. Ken Roberts:
From Playboy to Priest author, this guy sold a lot of books telling his conversion story. Turns out he still enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh, especially the masculine kind, and particularly at that great fraud called Medjugore. It was reported he would enjoy sex acts with male penitents. I remember seeing him on EWTN quite a bit.
Ted Haggard:
Crusading against homosexuality while himself enjoying the pleasures of homosexual sex, and drugs too. If you ever see some of his sermons, when he was on top of the evangelical world, you could not help but think this guy was quite creepy.
Deal Hudson:
Former editor of orthodox Catholic magazine Crisis, and neo-Conservative gate keeper for Catholics in the G. W. Bush White House, apparently while as a married, openly Christian and politically conservative professor at Fordham University he enjoyed getting blowjobs from some of his female students. I don’t have a problem with that, but I do have a problem with someone who is pushing conservative public policy while doing that at the same time. Again, an ex-EWTN favorite.
Fr. Maciel Marciel
I wrote on this guy before, but he is worth repeating. Head of the one of the most powerful and orthodox groups in the Catholic Church, the Legion of Christ, beloved of Pope John Paul, it turns out he was a child rapist for many decades, drug addict, and fathered a few children from different mistresses. I find it funny that the Pope refereed to him as “an efficacious guide to youth”. As if no one knew about this guy? Yeah, right. Yet while the Pope was praising this child rapist, he was condemning and silencing theologian Fr. Charles Curran at Catholic University for simply raising questions about the Churches teaching on sexuality.
You can see how fucked up things are in the Catholic Church on these matters.
George Reker:
Helped that Christian stalwart and anti-porn crusader James Dobson form the Family Research Council in 1983. A strong advocate of “family values”. A crusader against homosexuality, he himself enjoyed the services of homosexual prostitutes through “Rentboy.com” agency.
Fr. Thomas Euteneuer:
Described by one conservative blogger http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/otoole/110129 as “former head of Human Life International and Notre Dame Class of ’84 and once-bold critic of all public figures who supported abortion and sexual perversity…” Notice the phrase “sexual perversity”. This is a favorite of the religious fundies. I personally love being as sexually perverse as possible with as many hot women as I can who love the same…But to get back to this public figure. Apparently as an exorcist he enjoyed exorcizing some of his own sexual demons through the services of the possessed women he was exorcizing, if that makes any sense. To put it in more simple terms, he enjoyed the sexual pleasures of the flesh with various women while himself publicly proclaiming the sinfulness of such actions. Again, another former favorite of EWTN.
The above blogger blames his sexual exploits of demonic infestation. You can see how medieval so much of Catholic thought still is in human sexuality. No, the guy just never learned how to healthily integrate that hard-on he woke up with every morning, and fasting and prayer were not quite cutting it, so he took advantage of some willing and available pussy when he had the chance, like most horny and frustrated guys would. It’s called sex.
Fr. John Corapi:
This guy was the last straw for me. One of the most popular and militant of Catholic speakers, apparently he enjoyed prostitutes, sexting, etc, while making a ton of money on the foolish idiots who would buy his theological, cultural, and political rants in the name of Holy Mother Church. Now, once he was outed, he left the priesthood and wears a leather jacket and dresses like an aging biker while spouting fundamentalist dogma. Again, another favorite of EWTN, no longer around.
Islamic Fundamentalists:
Well, you know these guys have all sort of dirt on them, but since they tend to kill their enemies over there, it is hard to get real information. But you know many a goat and child have been sodomized by these nut cases. The homosexual subculture of Islam is a ripe topic for discussion, if anyone were brave enough to take it, because, as I mentioned, they will kill you if you speak badly of Islam. They hang homosexuals in Iran, for instance. Any society that is highly misogynistc, and sequesters women to preserver their purity, is ripe for homo loving, such as Ancient Greece or Modern Afghanistan under the Taliban. From what I understand, homosexual child molestation is quite common in most Islamic countries.
This is only the tip of the iceberg of sexual hypocrisy.
The Entire Catholic Church:
Read Richard Sipe, http://www.richardsipe.com/who has documented the clerical sexual subculture quite well, not only as a former Benedictine Monk, but as a clinical psychologist who has been working with sexually troubled clergy for almost fifty years. His are the best and most comprehensive writings on this topic. It is a fact that there is simply a large subculture of sexually active clergy within an institution whose official teachings are that all sexuality outside of marriage is sinful, and all clergy are to be celibate. That this is a serious problem is obvious, and for those fundies who refuse to see this, all we have to do is look at the massive sex abuse scandal that has plagued the entire Catholic Church now for at least a decade, but is in reality something that goes back centuries, if not two millennia. That is the reality of Catholic sexual teachings.
All Christian Denominations:
This does not even mention other Christian denominations, especially the fundamentalist ones, but as with the Swaggart and Haggard examples above, you know that these sexual hypocrisies exist among them, to varying degrees of severity, in one form or another.
As I said, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and the things we know about. You can image what else is out there, especially by those who crusade against “sexual perversity”. I myself have known many people, friends and priests, who were tormented by Christian teaching on sexuality. Eventually they could not take it anymore and either left the Church, or priesthood, and embraced honesty. Two friends of mine, when I met them, were devout, pious Catholic young men, very conservative and orthodox, who eventually admitted to themselves that they had same sex attraction and were living a lie all along and using Catholic orthodoxy to cover their true natures up. But while they lived that lie they were miserable. One related to me how he was a compulsive masturbator while repenting of his sin only to go back and masturbate some more in guilt and shame and secrecy. It was a really neurotic, vicious cycle and there is simply too much of this in Christianity.
Christian teachings on human sexuality need to change, because clearly very few people, including most self professed Christians, have ever really followed them and so most ask, what is the point?