Police: Pastor propositioned officer
A pastor who has spoken out against homosexuality was arrested after propositioning a male undercover police officer outside a hotel, authorities said.
2006 is only six days old, and we already have a bumper crop of DUMB@$$E$. Man, I can’t keep up…but I’m sure as hell trying….
Rev. Ronnie Latham’s heart may be in the right place (at least by his thinking), but his problem these days can be found farther south. Yes, it would seem that Latham has been thinking with the wrong head, and we all know what can happen when we let the little soldier do our thinking. Yep…you end up with a DUMB@$$ AWARD.
Of course, Latham isn’t the first homophobe to be arrested for propositioning an undercover cop with an offer to run it up the flagpole. No, what makes Latham a DUMB@$$ is his inability to recognize his own hypocrisy. Latham condemns the very behavior that he apparently is engaging in. But it’s OK…he’s a man of God, and his God is a forgiving God. Perhaps so, but I doubt that his God has a high tolerance for hypocrites and DUMB@$$E$.
As the Rev. Lonnie Latham, 59, left jail Wednesday, he said “I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police.”
Uh…and I suppose your version of “pastoring” involves dropping trou and “turning the other cheek”?? And, he wasn’t grabbing his ankles- he was tying his shoelaces….
Latham, a member of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, was arrested Tuesday and charged with offering to engage in an act of lewdness, Capt. Jeffrey Becker said.
Calls to Latham and his South Tulsa Baptist Church were not returned.
Really? What a shock….
Latham has supported a convention directive urging members to befriend gays and lesbians and try to convince them that they can become heterosexual “if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and reject their ‘sinful, destructive lifestyle.”’
Of course, if you’re a man of God, you can partake of this “sinful, destructive lifestyle” while suffering no ill effects. Apparently, being a pastor means getting a free pass. Uh, yeah…and I suppose this is the Baptist version of “immersion journalism”. Right; how can you address the evil, sinful gay lifestyle unless you have partaken of it yourself?
Now Jack, I'll be the first to agree that Lonnie Latham is a hypocrite of the first order. But if he's a DUMB@$$, his public homophobia made him one long before this little incident.
In theory, nothing Latham did should be criminal, especially after Lawrence v. Texas. But Oklahoma City, unfortunately, has a different view.
OKC has a long-standing despicable pratice of sending undercover agents provacateurs to public places frequented by gay men. Occasionally, a gay man finds an undercover officer attractive, and asks him home for some sex. The unfortunate gay is then arrested for "lewdness."
Note that we are not talking about prostitution or rape here; just one adult asking another for sex, as happens with men and women, gay and straight, in public parks and in privately-owned singles bars, day and night, everywhere in the US and throughout the world.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld this practice, despite obvious questions of selective enforcement (the OKC police don't send attractive women to arrest straight men for "lewdness") and free speech (post-Lawrence, gay sex is perfectly legal in Oklahoma; how can it be illegal to ask someone to do something legal?) At least one case was appealed to the US Supreme Court, but the Supremes declined to take the case.
If Latham is a DUMB@$$, it should be for his public proclamations of homophobia, not because he found himself attracted to someone who turned out to be an undercover cop.
Mathwiz: While this asshole was a dumbass long before getting caught in a messed up police sting, I think being a "hypocrite of the first order" magnifies his dumbass-ness more than it overshadows it.