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A P.E. teacher at an all-boys' grammar school in the U.K. resigned last week, just one month after students stumbled upon nude photos of him on a gay sex site.
"I didn't pose for anything pornographic," Sam Handley told the press in September. "I was just holding it."
Holding it -- stroking it. Reclining on a sofa playing with himself. All that and more, in fact. Needless to say, Handley was suspended and subsequently quit. And it got us at Advocate.com reminiscing about some of the biggest stories involving sex, lies, and unemployment.
On the following pages are a string of men who rose to celebrity after being punished for murder, posing for porn, "sexting" interns, or just for being gay.
Gay-porn star Kurt Wild was working with a different type of footlong --
as a Subway sandwich shop employee near St. Louis -- when, in 2008,
a customer recognized the then-22-year-old adult
entertainer and threatened to boycott the store. Wild claims he was fired solely for his involvement in gay
porn
"If a girl did what we do it would probably be OK, and if a
guy does straight porn he is bragged about," Wild wrote, in an e-mail to his fans. "When I do gay porn, I feel a bit lynched for the
rest of my life. Not right."
Ted
Haggard, better known as Pastor Ted, was the founder and pastor of the
New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and president of the
National Association of Evangelicals. Preaching to more than 10,000 parishioners
weekly and named one of Time magazine's most influential evangelicals
in 2005, Haggard was an icon among conservative Christians.
Then,
in November 2006, prostitute and masseur Mike Jones claimed the pastor
had solicited Jones for sex and methamphetamine. After initially
denying knowing Jones, Haggard admitted to committing "sexual
immorality" and resigned his posts with the church and the evangelical group.
Despite the scandal, Haggard and his wife,
Gayle Alcorn, remain married.
One
month after the Ted Haggard scandal, Paul Barnes resigned as senior
minister of the evangelical church Grace Chapel in Douglas County,
Colo. Barnes had founded the megachurch, which boasted a membership of 2,100
people at the time of his departure.
Barnes filmed a message to his
congregation declaring that he had been "struggling with homosexuality"
since the age of 5 and that counseling had not helped. The religious
leader decided to come clean about his sexuality after an anonymous
caller alerted the church that he would soon go public with Barnes's
secret.
Char, Barnes's wife, reported having no idea that her
husband and the father of their two daughters was having such struggles.
The pair said they would seek counseling.
Larry
Craig spent 10 years in the U.S. House of Representatives before
serving 18 years as a senator from Idaho. The Republican politician
and member of the board of directors of the National Rifle Association
was beloved by conservatives ... until he decided
to play footsie in a Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport men's
room.
The senator was arrested on a charge of lewd conduct on June 11, 2007,
after tapping his foot and making hand gestures to an undercover
officer in the adjacent bathroom stall. Craig claimed innocence. He
justified his actions by saying he had a "wide stance" and was picking
up a piece of paper.
After pleading guilty to the lesser
charge of disorderly conduct, Craig said he would resign his
Senate seat in September 2007. Then, in October, he released a statement saying he would retain his position. Craig's tenure in the Senate
finally ended following the 2008 election -- he was not up for
reelection.
Following the arrest, several men came forward
claiming to have been propositioned by Craig. One of the
eight men was Mike Jones, the escort who claimed to have been
solicited by former pastor Ted Haggard. Craig maintains that he is not
gay.
On
January 24, 2007, Bryan Charles Kocis, the founder of gay-porn film studio Cobra Video, was found murdered in his
Pennsylvania home. Kocis had been stabbed 28 times, and his home was
then set ablaze.
Two other porn producers, Harlow Cuadra (pictured) and
Joseph Kerekes, who also ran an escort service in Virginia, were arrested in May 2007 and charged with Kocis's
murder. On December 8, 2008, Kerekes pleaded guilty to second-degree
murder, theft, tampering with evidence, and criminal conspiracy, and was
sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In February 2009,
Cuadra's trial began. Among the witnesses who testified for the
prosecution was Sean Lockhart, more commonly known by his porn
pseudonym, Brent Corrigan. Lockhart had recorded conversations with
Cuadra and Kerekes while on a nude beach in San Diego a few months after the
murder. The conversation about Kocis resulted in Cuadra being found
guilty on all counts. The murderous escort was also
sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Jim
McGreevey was sworn in as governor of New Jersey in January 2002. Soon
after entering office, McGreevey faced mounting criticism for
appointing Golan Cipel as the state's homeland security adviser. Cipel
was a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces and not a U.S. citizen.
Rumors
began to swirl about the pair after the governor gave an interview to
The Record, a New Jersey newspaper. In the article, McGreevey was
described as having a close friendship with Cipel, whom the governor characterized as a poet.
Cipel stepped down from his position in
August 2002, but in 2004 the Israeli "poet" threatened to sue McGreevey
for sexual harassment. Before the lawsuit went public, the governor
held a press conference to announce his resignation.
With his
wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, beside him, McGreevey announced, "My truth is that I am
a gay American." The pair officially divorced in 2008.
Mark
Foley was elected to Congress from Florida's 16th district in
1994. During his tenure, Foley served on the highly influential House Ways and Means
Committee, and the unmarried politician eventually became deputy majority whip.
In
September 2006, blogger Lane Hudson revealed that Foley had sent e-mail
messages to a 16-year-old male former congressional page, asking the
teenager to send a picture of himself. During the course of one chat,
Foley asked the youth how he liked to masturbate, shared his fetish for
steam rooms, and instructed the teen to "get a ruler and measure it for
me."
After the initial report, more pages surfaced with
allegations that the congressman had sent them suggestive e-mails and
sexually explicit instant messages.
Foley resigned
from Congress on September 29, 2006. The FBI, Florida Department of Law
Enforcement, and the House Ethics Committee all conducted
investigations into the incident.
The text-happy legislator
later blamed a drinking problem for the explicit communications and
entered rehab in October 2006. While Foley never admitted to being gay,
his lawyer, David Roth, confirmed Foley's same-sex orientation.
Portland, Ore.'s Sam Adams made history in 2008 when he became the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city. But the biggest headlines about his political career came a few months later.
In January 2009, Portland's Willamette Week newspaper launched an investigation of Adams, claiming he'd had had a sexual relationship with a former legislative intern when the intern was a minor. The intern, Beau Breedlove, came forward, and the two said that while they'd met while he was a minor, they didn't have sex until he'd turned 18.
Adams managed to hold on to his job, and Breedlove found a new career -- as a cover model for Unzipped, which is owned by the same parent company as The Advocate.
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