If Gay Marriage Were Legal In 1998, Maybe Paul Crouch Would Still Be Preaching

Pastor Paul and his lover Enoch

Oh... he still is... at least on TV. Crouch, the founder of Trinity Broadcasting Network empire, the country's largest "Christian" television network, is 79 and pretty senile-- though not when it comes to sharp business dealings and milking the cash cow TBN has become. His baby, the international network, is bigger than CBS, bigger than Fox and bigger than NBC. The Crouch family has been using it as a personal piggy bank for years-- which has very serious-- and very unexplored-- tax implications. In 2010, Forbes reported that Crouch was paid just over $400,000 a year by TBN-- and that doesn't count the mansions, the Bentley, the half million dollar annual expense accounts, and the $50 million personal jet. Still, it's less than what he embezzled from the company to pay his lover, Enoch Lonnie Ford, to keep quiet about their homosexual relationship. Oh, those right-wing evangelicals are so wild and crazy!

When Rick Jones, an ordained minister and former cop, heard his boss talking about another minister's homosexual activity with an employee, he "got up and walked away," the Los Angeles Times reported on its front page yesterday. "I didn't want to hear gossip."

But his boss was televangelist Benny Hinn, a staple on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. And Hinn was talking about TBN founder and president Paul Crouch. And Los Angeles Times reports that it's no longer just gossip-- it's a tale of attempted extortion, litigation, and tragedy.

For all the details, you'll have to read William Lobdell's extensively reported, 1,900-word article. But here are a few observations.

First, extortion seems like the only word to describe what Enoch Lonnie Ford, the former TBN employee who says he and Crouch had extramarital sex in 1996, attempted. Crouch paid him a $425,000 settlement in 1998 after Ford accused the global network of wrongful termination. Key to the settlement, of course, was a secrecy agreement. Last April, however, Ford handed Crouch an autobiographical manuscript detailing his claims of a sexual encounter.

Why is the senile man in Jerusalem wearing a priest's collar & a pinkie ring? 

TBN had paid off Ford to keep the gay sex thing quiet years earlier but he wanted $10,000,000 more to not publish a book that details his affair with Crouch. That L.A. Times reported that "Crouch sued to enforce the 1998 secrecy agreement and obtained a restraining order barring Ford from seeking a publisher for his book. Orange County Superior Court Judge John M. Watson also granted Crouch's request to conduct the case in secret, sealing all documents and expunging any mention of the suit from public court records. Both sides eventually agreed to let a private arbitrator decide the matter. In June, the arbitrator ruled that Ford could not publish the manuscript without violating the 1998 settlement-- an act that could subject him to monetary damages."

Somehow being fleeced by charlatans has become an integral part of the American evangelical movement so not many people even remember the on-going Crouch saga. (His grandson, Matthew, another holy roller, can't keep his junk in his pants and has been obsessively exposing his genitals to staff members.) But even if normal people don't remember much about the crazy Crouches, most people still do remember when the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted "Pastor Ted" Haggard insisted he "never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife. So I don't know if this is election year politics [Haggard, like all these phony-baloney evangelical frauds, was busy turning out the brainless flock for the GOP] or if this has to do with the marriage amendment or what it is." What it was, of course, came with lots and lots of evidence of Haggard hiring high end male prostitutes for years and using street drugs to boot. As his story unraveled, it just took a few days before that standard Republican mantra--"never had a gay relationship with anybody"-- turned into "there is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all my adult life."

That's the real right-wing problem with the LGBT community-- terror about something "repulsive" and "dark" within. Get over it, gentlemen. It's not repulsive and it's not dark-- even if you perceive it that way. If you can't give up your sick wars within, stop trying to ruin everyone else's lives by dragging us into your drama. Go deal with your problems or commit suicide or do whatever you want, but leave people who have evolved alone. This has gone on way long enough. You guys are a menace to society-- and in a very big way.

Oh... so this is where GOP sociopath Paul Broun (R-GA) got his most famous quote about "lies straight from the pit of hell."