06/07/10

Christians on a roll: a sermon on rent boys

When we throw around the term “Rent Boy”, we usually mean a young man whose impeccable abs and other finery are for hire. A very privileged few of us mean a young man with impeccable abs who pays the rent. But we’ve been outdone by the Catholic hierarchy, which has combined the two but inverted the equation.

Catholic priest Rev. Kevin J. Gray, who used to preach abstinence, celibacy, humility and heterosexual norms in Connecticut (just up the road from where my mother sings in her church choir), has been done for stealing US$ 1.3 million from the Church and blowing it on expensive hotels and male escorts, according to the Associated Press. But he did more than just pay for an occasional admiring squint at their abs. He paid their rent.

My own rent boy’s reaction: “Where do I sign up?”

This post was published on 06/07/10 in Ideology and HIV.

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  1. Comment by Lee Rudolph, 07/07/10, 12:52:

    CRAZY JANE TALKS WITH THE BISHOP

    I met the Bishop on the road
    And much said he and I.
    ‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
    Those veins must soon be dry;
    Live in a heavenly mansion,
    Not in some foul sty.’

    ‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
    And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
    ‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
    Nor grave nor bed denied,
    Learned in bodily lowliness
    And in the heart’s pride.

    ‘A woman can be proud and stiff
    When on love intent;
    But Love has pitched his mansion in
    The place of excrement;
    For nothing can be sole or whole
    That has not been rent.’

    (William Butler Yeats foreshadows the whole
    rent boy issue.)

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