Colleen Kochivar-Baker's stellar comment here yesterday, in response to the story about Michael Voris revealing his gay past that I posted on Friday:
Well, that read like an AA testimony. Gay/bisexual boy repenting on mother's death bed is the stuff from which legends are made. Voris very much reminds me of the Donald....a walking talking personality disorder. It's one thing to have a personal conversion and praise God every other sentence, but it's quite another to make a very good living condemning others for the very sins you yourself have committed. All the right wing uber Catholics never seem to catch the point that the Church's great revert saints rarely condemned anyone else for their past transgressions. The fact the Voris can't stop himself from gay bashing is all I need to know about how deep his conversion went.
Colleen speaks here out of her experience as a trained psychotherapist with a deep connection to the Catholic mystical tradition.
In a comment in the same thread, Greg points us to a discussion of the Voris story that has been going on at the Joe.My.God site. Joe Jervis writes,
Back in 2010 I posted several times about Voris, his attacks on President Obama, on LGBT rights, and his call for a "benevolent Catholic dictatorship in the United States." These posts prompted a JMG reader to write and tell me that he’d once been close friends with Voris, who, according to the reader, had been a producer at the CBS affiliate in Detroit.
The reader further shared that he, Voris, and Voris’ boyfriend at the time had attended International Mister Leather some time in the 90s. According to the reader, Voris had to lend him a leather item in order to comply with that weekend’s dress code at Chicago’s Manhole bar.
From the reader’s email: "It really pains me to see Mike spitting this vitriol into the public, and it also pains me to see a guy who was once a deep and close friend be the subject of ridicule and derision. But I also recognize that he’s brought this upon himself. Until he can face his own demons, he’ll only be able to demonize that which scares him."
During my 2010 exchange of emails with the above-quoted JMG reader, he asked that he not be named should I report on his account of Voris' past. As I was unable to independently confirm that Voris had, as Voris himself now puts it, once lived a sexually sinful life, I decided against outing him based on an anonymous claim. That issue, obviously, is now moot. At this writing, nearly 1400 Church Militant commenters have effusively praised Voris for his revelation.
As Joe also points out, Voris and Church Militant played a key role in the recent witch hunt to get Catholic News Service's Tony Spence fired for tweeting criticisms of North Carolina's new anti-LGBT hate law.
I repeat what I said about the Voris story two days ago: sick. There is a deep sickness within right-wing Christianity, whether Catholic, evangelical, or Mormon, around issues of sexuality. This sickness twists the souls (and psyches) of people infected with this particular illness. And it's on full, proud display at the Church Militant site on an ongoing basis.
