Mike Jones Speaks Out About Haggard.

Meanwhile, Rev. Haggard Wants Your Money Again...

In a terrific well-researched story in The Stranger, Seattle's alt-weekly, it seems that anti-gay Rev. Ted Haggard, who used to be Time Magazine's Evangelical Preacher of the Year who talked to George Bush every week (while doing crack and having sex with then hustler Mike Jones) wants you to send him money despite his 3/4 million dollar home and steady pay-off from his former church.

Even better, he wants you to send the money to a "charity" run by a convicted sex offender -- a charity that doesn't seem to exist anymore.

Shall we compare the work of Ted Haggard to Mother Teresa? And yes, by all means, let's keep sending him money.

Mike's Table is Back!

Joe.My.God. reports that Mike Jones' massage table is BACK up on eBay, and, of course, some busybody ministry wants it taken down because "it's offensive to Christians." I notice that this time there's no mention of the Project Angel Heart charity, but Mike assures us that the money raised will go to them. (I'm guessing eBay had some technical rule about how charity auctions work which Mike didn't or couldn't fulfill).

No, Rev. Booth, whoever you are, YOU are offensive to Christians. You are offensive to everyone who thinks that by hiding behind your collar, you can suddenly become some paragon of spirituality. But, as Joe put it, you're just another typical "fundie-obsessed with homosexuals" phony baloney "minister."

Go away. The adults are trying to live their lives with integrity.

The Wrong Massage.

Hypocrites in Action:

A so-called "ministry" devoted to destroying the lives of gay people has convinced eBay to take down the massage table that Mike Jones was auctioning to raise money for Project Angel Heart. Ex-Gay Watch has an excellent post on the subject, noting that "Transforming Ministries," which began the protest has not offered to raise money for people with AIDS in lieu of the money that won't be raised for them.

Instead, they simply have preferred to try to continue the cover-up of shame and hypocrisy of the Ted Haggard situation. The "Rev." Haggard, of course, who enjoyed paying for gay sex with Mike, has stopped being gay after three weeks of therapy, according to his statement.

It's okay, though. Mike's book will be out soon. We'll learn all about the "real" Rev. Haggard.

Own Some History

Mike Jones, our favorite evangelist massage expert, has finally put "the massage table" up on eBay. It's a piece of Presidential history and, yes, the money raised will be going to Project Angel Heart, which delivers food to sick people in Denver. Bid away!

Dinner with Joe and Mike.

Last night, we had a fun dinner with Mike Jones (the man who outed Ted Haggard, and who was in town for a taping of the Montel Show) and Joe.My.God., my favorite blogger on the net (and who helped find Mike Jones, setting up a support fund link for him after the election and everyone had forgotten all about him).

AND I FORGOT MY CAMERA BECAUSE I WAS RACING TO GET OUT THE DOOR. ARRGGGHH!!!

Joe is lively and funny and full of stories in person. It's our first time to really just hang out. We promised to get together again before Jim and I take off from New York.

Mike told us about the Montel taping and I hope, when they edit the piece, it's as good as he described. For one thing, they invited several "exgay" types to join him. One couple backed out when they heard that Montel was going to talk about the husband's number of sexual couplings (over 500) before getting married to a girl.

On the air, though, Exodus shill Alan Chambers got nailed by Montel for his frequent dissemblings. Alan has this problem, see. He never tells the story exactly the same way twice. When he's on right wing political sites, the number of "exgays" is in the "hundreds of thousands." Then when he's elsewhere, the number goes down to "tens of thousands." When he's in the mainstream media, the number goes down to "thousands." Daniel, over at Ex-Gay Watch has put together, for instance, this video demonstrating Alan's inability to be consistent:



I'm not saying Alan himself is a bad person. But I am saying that their movement is designed around propaganda and their belief that they are SO right that they have to support their rightness by saying whatever they need to say to keep the contributions flowing and to keep parents of gay kids turning out for their dog and pony shows in conjunction with Focus on the Family. (Actual gay kids almost never attend these conferences -- it's all about corrupting the minds of the parents).

They are in a mode of thought one can only be described as "the ends justifies the means." They'll say ANYTHING to keep the farce of their movement afloat.

Mike told me that Montel became so frustrated with Chambers that he had his staff go to the Exodus website and print out Alan's words. Then he thrust them in his face during the taping. I hope all this gets into the final edit.

Mike said, also, that his book is going to reveal a lot of things about our Rev. Ted Haggard which is going to be quite incendiary. For the record, I adore Mike Jones. He's a simple, easy and sweet guy. But he is also smart and sharp and funny, with a great wit. He's not some simpleton himbo by any means. No matter what you might think of people in his former profession, this man is not a pushover and not stupid. Behind those blue eyes is a very honest and forthright person who spoke out because, in his words, "he had to."

BTW, he is putting his massage table up on eBay -- a massage table I said belonged in the Smithsonian -- and all the proceeds are going to Project Angel Heart in Denver, which feeds people with AIDS and other life debilitating diseases. Look for it.

The Lone Hero

"When the story first came out," Mike Jones (the man who outed Rev. Ted Haggard and thus kept the Republicans off balance and the press focused on the self-righteous hypocrisy of the Bush administration -- Haggard being a Bush supporter and constant consultant) told me over dinner as he casually and affectionately held my hands in his, "the only thing the press was interested in were the dirty details of sex. And the headlines blazed PROSTITUTE! PROSTITUTE! PROSTITUTE!"

"They weren't interested in what an escort's life really consists of. All they wanted were lurid details."

I understood. I told him how, long ago when I first was in New York, I played piano in a high class hustler bar on the Upper East Side. Because I was the constant in the club, I became great friends with many of the "boys" working the place. Most of them were genuinely lovely persons, and I learned a completely different side of the world's oldest profession from what our Puritanical society wants to believe as society denounces them while hanging onto, and begging for, every last sensuous detail.

What most of their clients are really looking for, especially in a midwest city is intimacy and someone to really be themselves with. Mike told me of a married closeted soldier with a rare form of Leukemia who sat with him one night after learning that one of his fellow sufferers from a Leukemia support board suddenly "disappeared." And how painful it was when that soldier himself suddenly stopped calling.

"I never let myself get emotionally involved with any clients, but still, I knew how much they needed the human contact I could provide."

I saw his sense of compassion in two ways Sunday night. First, there was a tall guy with a beautiful smile sitting alone in the front row. Mike saw him at intermission standing my himself, so he walked up to him asking him who he was, found out he was visiting from Chile, and invited him to dinner with us all. Just like that.

Then, afterwards, we were all walking from the theatre to the restaurant (Joe Allen's) when Mike noticed that one of our party, an older fellow who is all but blind, was falling behind. (I didn't know he was part of our group.) So Mike left everyone else and ran behind to join him and walk with him. It's not that anyone else wouldn't have done that, but he went out of his way to NOTICE and to make sure everyone was taken care of.

As we ate dinner, he made sure everyone got a chance to speak, he was gently affectionate with everyone in our party, and he just made everyone feel special. That takes a lot of effort and it's something that really has to come from within. I could tell he wasn't "working" the room. He just has this genuine caring attitude. It's no wonder a Ted Haggard or a lonely soldier would be drawn to him time after time.

When he outed Rev. Haggard, it was because Ted was one of the leading evangelical ministers in Colorado fighting against gay marriage. It's one thing to be forced or feel forced into a closeted lifestyle, but it's quite another to then turn around, after getting your yaya's off with an escort, to then stab your fellow gay people in the back by fighting to keep THEM from getting married.

Mike, outraged at this double standard, called a reporter and did the whole thing on his own. He had no support. No big gay group supporting him. In fact, him being what he is, there were all kinds of people skeptical of his motivations.

It was a personal decision to out Rev. Ted and it caused a huge disruption in his life, the police were on him, he was in danger of losing his home, his income dropped to zero and he had a target on this back. The gay establishment also was uninterested in helping him. After all, he was a "just" a prostitute, a whore to be shunned. For instance, one day, after it all happened, he was feeling kind of blue and lonely, so he left his apartment and decided to just go to a gay bar for a little companionship, to be among "his own people" and chill...



That's when Joe.My.God., a popular gay blogger went looking for him, wrote him, found out his situation and then created a blogger groundswell of support for his readers (and mine after I posted a link to Joe's entry) to send some financial help to Mike.

"You know, you saved me," he said to me while holding my hands, his eyes beginning to glisten with tears. "I can't tell you what it meant to me."

I protested. "No, darlin', it was Joe. All I did was agree with him," I responded. "You saved us. You are a hero to more people than you think. You are the one who put yourself on the line for us all."

Mike is no longer an escort. He now has to find a way to support himself. He managed to get a book deal with a small publisher so now he's finally on the road to recovery. I told him I was proud that he came to see our show, and even more proud to call him friend.

Some have already asked me why I'd "associate" with a "whore." Well, my sweet reader, the real whores, IMO, are the phony-assed preachers, Exodus "converts" and anti-gay zealots whose entire livelihoods depend upon turning the world against us. Give me a Mike Jones over a self-righteous "Christian" of that ilk any day of the week.

Mike Jones is more than just a friend to me. He's my hero.



EDIT: Joe also writes about his meeting with Mike last night and notes that the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force is honoring him. At last!

Mike Jones, Total Sweetheart

Spent the evening at dinner with Mike Jones last night (the guy who outed Ted Haggard, thus keeping the Republicans from taking any headlines before the election) and he is absolutely the loveliest, most kind and generous man. I totally fell in love with him and will be blogging about it soon. But thought I'd post a little pic of us. I can't say enough about how much I adore this sweetheart of a human being. I will write more fully about him later.

Helping Mike Jones

I am lending my blog support to Joe.My.God's efforts to help Mike Jones, the man who exposed the religious hypocrite, Ted Haggard, the minister who had the ear of the White House, who was fighting and raging against gay people, while having a gay relationship with Mike who was, at the time, a hustler. Joe has been talking to Mike and is outraged that the mainstream gay organizations seem to be holding him at arm's length. But it's safe to say that Mike's courage was instrumental in helping overthrow the homophobes running our government in this last election.

Go to Joe's blog entry and you will find more information about how to help Mike. As Joe puts it:

It was at this time last week that the last bell finally rang on the 2006 election, delivering the House, the Senate, and the majority of state governships into the hands of the Democrats. The map is blue again. And so is the sky. My face is sore from smiling and my feets are aching from all this happy dancing.

And playing a possibly vital, perhaps pivotal role in this triumph was not a politician. Not a party strategist. It was a private citizen. It was a gay man. A man who although he was risking his personal livelihood, risking his arrest, and surely risking his physical safety, he came forward and did the right thing at the right time.

That man is Mike Jones.

Regardless of your personal opinions regarding Jones' chosen field of work, you cannot ignore his unprecedented accomplishment of almost completely upending the Republican Party's last minute campaign to divert the nation's attention from the true issue of the election: the Iraq war.

Talking Heads: "The terrorists have just blah blah....gay marriage referendum blah blah....stem cell legislation blah blah...millions of illegal immigrants blah blah. Um, wait a minute. We have a breaking bulletin: Pastor Ted Haggard! Head of evangelical movement! Homosexual! Prostitution! Crystal meth! Close to the President! More! More! More! More!"

Repeat on every channel.

Headlines on every paper.

For five days.

The five days BEFORE the election.

All the billionaire George Soroses in the world could not have more effectively eclipsed the Republicans' usual last minute diversionary tactics. It was pure delicious serendipity. It was kismet. And most of all, it was KARMA, baby.

We'll never know the exact impact that Mike Jones' revelations had on the national election. He came forward specifically because Ted Haggard was hypocritically supporting Colorado's anti-gay referendum. That referendum passed, anyway. And Jones probably didn't fathom that his story would balloon into a national media orgy and image nightmare for the RNC and President Bush. Jones could not have predicted that his little sex & drugs scandal might have spun unknowable numbers of wavering digusted red staters over to blue country.

But it happened. Just barely enough to win by a tiny margin. But it was enough.

[EDIT: Even Karl Rove agrees that Mike Jones had a hand in the Republicans' undoing, telling Time Magazine, "The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected. Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass." (via - Columbia Journalism Review. Emphasis mine.) ]

I've been in contact with Mike over the last week. He tells me that the major gay rights organizations have extended nothing but ten-foot poles. He is unemployed and I imagine that for at least the short future, he is unemployable. He is facing the potential of huge legal bills. He has received death threats from Haggard's followers and other peace-loving Christians.

Gentle readers, you and I owe Mike Jones a debt of gratitude. It's a different country than it was seven days ago, and even if you think that Mike Jones had only the tiniest part in effecting that change, we OWE him. Remember those last two Senate seats were decided by just a few thousand votes each.

So please, show your thanks.

Go to PayPal's Send Money screen and throw some love to our unlikely hero, using his email account: "massageandmuscle@aol.com" If you ran into Mike Jones in a bar, wouldn't you insist on buying his drinks? There's thousands and thousands of you out there in JMG-land, and I'm willing to bet that you too have sore faces from smiling and aching feet from all that happy dancing. Show some appreciation to the man who might have helped put that smile on your face and the blue back on that map.

If you don't have a PayPal account, they are free and take less than 1 minute to set up. You can send cash directly to Mike from your ATM or credit cards. Send him the $10 you would have spent buying him drinks, if you ran into him in a bar. Send him the $20 you would have spent buying his dinner in a restaurant. Send him $50, $100, maybe more, if you think that maybe, just maybe, Mike Jones had a hand in changing the political landscape of our nation, and possibly, just possibly, a war.

And even if you don't buy any of the above, if you don't think what Jones did had ANY effect on the election, you should thank him. Thank him just for the sheer entertainment of the last week. Thank him for exposing the ugly hypocrisy of the evangelical movement. That alone, is worth a ten-spot. At least.

Joe speaks for me. I've also extended an invitation for Mike to see Big Voice if he's in NY so I can personally shake and hand and thank him for his personal courage.

Chuck's Living Room

I was just at the end of my solid 45 minutes of running, listening to Robert Altman talk about how perfection is unnecesary and subjective, when I heard someone shouting. I continued on, but then heard the noise again. It was Chuck, my homeless veteran friend, pushing his shopping cart. He was on the other side of the big city street.

I pulled out my earbuds, waved at him, and then crossed over. It was about 6:30am. The sun had risen, but it was still too low in the sky to see and there was still a cool moistness from the ocean in the desert air. (I love L.A.)

"How's it going?" I asked him. He seemed a bit weak.

"Ah, doin' okay. Just tired. Wasn't feeling that good the past couple of days," he said, sounding exhausted already.

We were almost in front of our apartment, so I told him to wait a sec and I'd run up and get our recyclables, which he was dutifully collecting.

"You don't really get a day off, do you?" I said, upon returning.

He took the bag of cans, thanked me enthusiastically and then sorted them out in the various plastic bags he had hanging off his cart. He looked up at me, "I work seven days a week," he said sounding weary.

"Let's keep walking," I said. "I haven't cooled down yet." Now that I've made the decision to conquer this triglyceride problem through sheer force of will and hard work, my routine is to run for 45 solid minutes every morning without stopping.

"Okay, cool," he responded. We walked on down the block. But then, a few minutes later, after I had cooled off some, we saw a couch sitting on the sidewalk. Something someone had thrown away.

"Wow," I said. "This couch is nicer than the one we have in our apartment. Let's sit."

He said, "Turn the cushions over first. They'll be wet." So we turned them over and then sat down. It felt good to rest. Looking up at the apartment complex in front of us, I said, "Well, I love what you've done with the place, but the TV is too small."

He laughed and said, "Yeah! Welcome to my living room!"

I asked him if he was still living in the same place he was living in before, which he had described as a little room behind someone's house, the electricity supplied by an extension cord.

"Naw. She's selling her house and the real estate person said I had to go."

"So, where are you living now?"

He pointed to his cart. Beneath the basket was a plastic bag. "Right there. That's all my bedding. I found a little spot in the parking lot of a department store near where the electrical box is housed. I get there about 10pm just as the bigwigs are driving off and the lights go out. The maintenance men all know me. It's pretty nice actually, but I have to find someplace else when the rains start."

"You don't have a roof over the place?"

"Naw. But it's okay. No one knows it's there, so I feel safe. And I have this GREAT big blanket that I found in a bin not too long ago. You could cover this whole couch and it would still run 10 feet out in front of us."

I noticed that he looked a little less clean than he used to. Chuck has always taken great pride in not being dirty and always finding clean shirts for his excavations.

"What about going up north? You still planning to visit your friend and pan for gold in Oregon?"

"Only if my sister sends me some money. I have to buy some fishing gear and some camping equipment. I'm not sure. I'm okay right now. I like the two dollar movie house. You can get two hot dogs for two dollars."

It's hard to know what to feel at times like this. Jimmy and I have struggled a lot with bills over the years, especially after I got sick. But we never have had to sleep out on the street, even when we had to go to friends to borrow money for rent.

Chuck and I sat on the couch and talked awhile longer. "Hey," I said. "I haven't seen Saddam Hussein this morning."

"Naw, he's probably gotten his welfare check." Chuck refuses to get welfare or VA help. "When he runs that out, he'll be back out here. Meanwhile, I have the whole area to myself."

"Well," I said. "I need to get back home. I've been waitin' to hear about a job. I hope it comes through." I dug into my pocket and picked out a few bills.

He objected. "Oh, you don't need to give me money."

I put them into his cart, anyway, apologetically. "It's not much, my friend. Just a few bucks. Have a couple of hot dogs on me."

He got a twinkle in his eye. "Hey!" He said. "You know, what goes around, comes around. I have a few old, homeless friends and I'm always giving them a few bucks so they can get a sandwich or something. Now, you've given me a few bucks. This means good luck for you the rest of the day! That job is gonna come through. I just know it."

I smiled and said goodbye, but walked quickly away because my eyes were starting to burn a little. I stopped after a moment and shouted back, "Good luck, Chuck!"

He smiled his goofy, half-toothless smile at me, waved, and said, "So long, buddy. So long."

Chuck's Big Adventure

This morning, on my run, I saw Chuck my sometimes homeless Vet friend sitting on a retainer wall near the laundramat smoking a cigarette, his shopping cart tricked out with bags full of cans and bottles sitting nearby.

"Hey!" I said. "I got a bunch more cans for ya."

"Well, I guess I can follow you up the block," he replied, sounding a bit tired.

"No, no. I'm still running. I'll go get 'em and bring 'em back."

So, I did. I was near the end of my routine, anyway, so after I retrieved the "California Gold," as he puts it, I sat with him for awhile.

"You probably won't be seein' me around here after two weeks. I'm goin' up to Oregon."

"Oregon, huh? Escaping the heat?" (The San Fernando Valley has been blast furnace hot for the past few weeks.)

"Naw. Gonna go pan for gold."

"Gold?"

"Yeah, an old buddy of mine owns a piece of land out in the wilderness and there's a creek up there. He's gonna give me some money and I'm gonna pan for gold. It's lined with moss, see, and the little flakes of gold get caught in the moss. The dentists and the jewelers, they love that flake gold."

"Sounds beautiful."

"He's got a still up there, too. Best you ever tasted. Smooth goin' down. Not like that kind that..." and he made sound like a whistling bomb falling, followed by an explosion, pointing at his stomach.

"Gotta watch for bears, though. Black bears. They get mean. I'm gonna have two guns with LOTS of bullets."

"So, you're gonna cure the bear meat?"

"Naw. I know how, though, to salt meat. I'm only gonna shoot 'em if they try to kill me."

"So, you trying to escape the heat?"

"Not really. It gets hot and sticky up there. But I got a book I want to write. It's all in my head, except there's a little extra I might throw in where NASA refurbishes a space shuttle and gives it to me so I can go up there and guide the satellites. You know they got somebody here on earth who does nothing but pull handles to keep the satellites in position."

"Really?"

"Yeah, the book takes place on the planet Cycloptera where all the people have a third eye. And they have dinosaurs with eyes in the back of their heads, but they taste lousy."

I laughed. "The dinosaurs taste lousy?"

"Yeah, and the people wear their hair in bangs over the third eye. I'm gonna sit and write it and then hope some publishing company will want to publish it. I got 354 pages and it's all in my head right now."

"So when you leavin'?"

"Two weeks. Maybe a month. He's gonna get me a dog and a mule. It's four miles up the river. I'm gonna live in a tent -- you know, like..." and he drew and outline of a tent with a roof and sides.

"So, what are you gonna eat?"

"Oh, there's lots of birds and fish. But you gotta be careful about making bacon and eggs in the morning cuz those bears'll smell that 2 miles away and come lookin' for ya."

"What about your court thing?" (He was busted for taking a Coke can off a city-owned trash bin).

"Ah, they'll dismiss that. It's not like I shot somebody."

Tags: oregon,
veteran, homeless