By now, you've probably heard about John Gechter, a 22-year-old senior at a Christian college who was suspended when it came to the attention of the school's administration that his self-designed off-campus work-study program included appearing in several porn films. GAY PORN, no less.
Fundies in their undies stories never get old, for me at least. Part of it is just small-minded schadenfreude, of course, but another part is a belief that every additional beam of sunlight shone on the implicit hypocrisy helps hasten the day when the whole religious fundamentalist edifice that's built on being pathologically uptight about sex will come crumbling down and everyone can just breathe normally for once.
Since I don't know anything about Gechter besides what I've read on the Internet (e.g.), I bear him little animus. Maybe there's the idle thought that it's good to put his name in lights now, lest he grow up to be yet another tiresome Christianist do-as-I-preach-not-as-I-do moralizer (cf. Haggard, Ted; Craig, Larry; Bakker, Jim; Gannon, Jeff; et al), but mostly? For all I know, this is just another example of a person growing out of the constraints of his upbringing -- a good and healthy thing, and the primary reason everyone who possibly can should go away to college.
His school is entitled to hold him to their own rules, since it appears they're a private institution and this is a free country, but they nonetheless deserve to be badgered by the rest of us for the twistedness of their standards, not to mention their hypocrisy. From their About page:
By charter, the doors of the College were open to qualified students "without regard to religious test or belief." The founders of Grove City College, consciously avoiding narrow sectarianism, held a vision of Christian society transcending denomination, creeds, and confessions. They were committed to the advancement of free enterprise, civil and religious liberty …
I guess they would say they "free enterprise" is not really so free after all, and they have no patience for uncivil liberties? Or maybe they're just so blinkered that they can't realize their rules of student conduct -- whereby someone who has sex that's not of the married man and woman and only for the purposes of procreation variety is considered in violation -- are, in fact, a religious test. How a man chooses to conduct himself off-campus is none of their affair; Gechter is an adult and he did nothing illegal. For that matter, he even performed under a pseudonym, which is a further reason for the school not to go bouncing off the walls at the thought of their Image Being Sullied. And what about the little fink who just happened to come across Gechter's work and tattled? Did he get his thirty pieces of silver from you?
But enough of my moralizing. You'll like Gawker's take on it better. Snark is really the best way to handle these things.
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