Another Anti-gay pastor outed...

[Soilwork]

http://www.365gay.com/Newscon06/12/121106pastor.htm


(Denver, Colorado) The senior pastor of a second Colorado megachurch has resigned following a phone call to the church outing him.

The Rev. Paul Barnes of Grace Chapel in South Denver announced in a video taped message to his congregation Sunday that he was stepping down.

"1 have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy," Barnes said in the video according to the Denver Post which was allowed to view the tape.

".. I can't tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away."

In the video Barnes is seen sitting with his wife.

The church's associate pastor, Dave Palmer, told the Post that the church got an anonymous call last week from a person who said he had overheard a conversation in which someone mentioned "blowing the whistle" on evangelical preachers engaged in homosexuality, including Barnes.

Barnes founded Grace Chapel in his basement 28 years ago and saw it grow to be one of the biggest churches in the state.

His resignation comes a month after Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard was outed by a former male prostitute. (story)

Barnes preached that homosexuality is a sin, but unlike Haggard neither he nor his church took a stand on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that was approved by voters last month.

In the video Barnes said he became a Christian at age 17 and felt it would help him give up homosexuality, but the feelings never went away, he said.

Still, he said he cannot accept that a person is "born that way," adding that he believes sexuality is influenced by childhood experiences.

Barnes said in the video that he has been in counseling three times but never found anyone he could talk to.

His wife also appeared in the half-hour video the Post reported, saying that she didn't know about her husband's struggles until he confided in her last week. The couple has two daughters in their 20s.

©365Gay.com 2006

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So can the fucking Christians PLEASE give up on the idea that being gay can be "cured" at all?

I mean, if those guys can't get turned into straight men by "god", then it's pretty much proof that God isn't in the Heterosexual-making business.

And can we also please get those fucking Evangelicals to admit they're just a bunch of high-horse jerks who need to judge others to make themselves feel a bit better about their useless selves?

 

[blankslate]

yes. yes we can

 

[NedNickerson]

This is part of Paul Barne's sermon after Ted Haggard's resignation.
================================================

Sermon: "Most of us ... wear masks"
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer

On Nov. 5, the Rev. Paul Barnes scrapped his prepared sermon. The Rev. Ted Haggard scandal was still unfolding, and he couldn't let it go unnoticed.

So Barnes wrote a new sermon: "Integrity, Sin and Grace."

Barnes defined integrity as "being the same on the outside as you are on the inside."

All people come to God broken, he said. Maybe it's alcoholism, he said. Or a bad temper. Or pornography. Some people overcome their problems; others continue to live with them, he said.

"Most of us, if the truth were known, we wear masks," Barnes said. "... Sometimes, we wear masks because we want to be appear more perfect than we are. But the reality of it is, all of us are so very imperfect."

Some people view homosexuality second only to pedophilia on a list of "disgusting things a person can do," he said.

But why, he asked, do so many Christians gloss over the sins of adultery or idolatry?

"What causes more damage to a society? The 2 to 3 percent of the people in a society that are gay or the 50 percent of people in society who have been married and divorced and remarried?"

He urged grace and mercy for sinners - all kinds.

 

[Johnny Yen]

I know eating donuts is wrong and I am constantly denoucing the evils of trans-fat and yet... I still eat french fries...

 

[luminum]

No, I think it'll probably take an egregious amount of repetative beatings over the head with more cases for them to even start to conceive of that notion.

 

[luminum]

No, I just happen to enjoy the world 'egregious'. I haven't used it in a long time, so when I recently got back into it, I've been flexing it again.

Let's hope someone gets the hint and brings that to front and center.

 

[cocktales]

When are the Evangelicals gonna finally give it ALL up and finally realize that homosexuality is all part of what God created?

I mean, if one would only be logical about the situation..........there's NO way this many Gay people could ALL be deviants........think about it!

So if God created "US" in his image, if we deny the existence of Gay people, we are defying the beautiful creatures that God created and denying their inclusion into religious gatherings with open arms!

Perhaps one day a lightning bolt will hit these people and they will see the devine acceptance...

 

[operafan]

Any word on who outed him? Another hustler, mayhaps?

These evangelists - they're such fun people to know!

 

[hotdog1846]

When they came up with the slogan "Colorful Colorado", they didn't mean the scenery!

 

[operafan]

There is another way for gay evangelicals...

Chris Keane for The New York Times

Martin Fowler, left, and Clyde Zuber invite other gay evangelical Christians to their North Carolina home for Bible study on Friday nights.


Gay and Evangelical, Seeking Paths of Acceptance


Published: December 12, 2006
RALEIGH, N.C. — Justin Lee believes that the Virgin birth was real, that there is a heaven and a hell, that salvation comes through Christ alone and that he, the 29-year-old son of Southern Baptists, is an evangelical Christian.



Enlarge This Image
Chris Keane for The New York Times
Justin Lee set up a Web site about being a gay evangelical Christian.



Just as he is certain about the tenets of his faith, Mr. Lee also knows he is gay, that he did not choose it and cannot change it.


To many people, Mr. Lee is a walking contradiction, and most evangelicals and gay people alike consider Christians like him horribly deluded about their faith. “I’ve gotten hate mail from both sides,” said Mr. Lee, who runs gaychristian.net, a Web site with 4,700 registered users that mostly attracts gay evangelicals.


The difficulty some evangelicals have in coping with same-sex attraction was thrown into relief on Sunday when the pastor of a Denver megachurch, the Rev. Paul Barnes, resigned after confessing to having sex with men. Mr. Barnes said he had often cried himself to sleep, begging God to end his attraction to men.


His departure followed by only a few weeks that of the Rev. Ted Haggard, then the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and the pastor of a Colorado Springs megachurch, after a male prostitute said Mr. Haggard had had a relationship with him for three years.


Though he did not publicly admit to the relationship, in a letter to his congregation, Mr. Haggard said that he was “guilty of sexual immorality” and that he had struggled all his life with impulses he called “repulsive and dark.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/12/u...&en=f8678a1c328a2998&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

[Roland00]

This was also posted in the politics section, it belongs in both sections, but I figured I would link to it for there are some more comments there.

http://justusboys.com/forum/showthread.php?t=131536