Last week's issue of Time magazine had, buried in a long piece
about American Taliban John Walker Lindh, a suggestion that
"Taliban Johnny" had shared a gay relationship with a Pakistani
businessman named Khazar Hayat. Here's how it was picked up and
sensationalized by the New York Daily News in a piece titled:
Bizman:
Lindh was my gay lover:
John Walker Lindh's "dangerous journey" into Islamic militancy was cemented by a sexual relationship with a Pakistani businessman who guided the American Taliban turncoat toward schools that fueled his hatred for the United States, [Time] magazine reported yesterday. "It was the beginning of the dangerous journey, the first jaunt, the pleasure journey," Mufti Mohammad Iltimas Khan, a spiritual adviser, said of Lindh's encounter with the businessman.
Time's actual article, The
Making of John Walker Lindh, had this to say:
Hayat met Lindh and took him on a tour of various madrasahs, searching for the perfect one from Karachi in the south to Peshawar in the northwest. The young American rejected them all and preferred remaining at Hayat's side. He helped Hayat at his store, a prosperous business dealing in powdered milk. Hayat, who has a wife and four children, says he had sex with Lindh. "He was liking me very much. All the time he wants to be with me," says Hayat, who has a good though not colloquial command of English. "I was loving him. Because love begets love, you know."
But something about this doesn't seem to gel, since earlier news
reports had noted Lindh's rejection of his gay father as morally
corrupt. Soon after, CNN weighed in with this take, in
Pakistani man denies having sex with Taliban
American:
Hayat, who said Walker Lindh stayed with him about a month, denied having sexual relations with the young American. "That's nonsense," he said. "We never had any such relationship." Lindh's lawyers deny that their client engaged in any homosexual relationships.
I don't know what the truth is, but it seems like Time's reliance on evidence such as Hyat's fractured English was probably suspect.
Interestingly, while Time was quick to publicize a gay
allegation for Lindh, the New York Times treaded a bit too
carefully when it came to discussing the homosexual orientation of
a true hero. In a Sept. 20 piece titled Killed on
9/11, Fire Chaplain Becomes Larger Than Life,
Daniel J. Wakin writes this of Father Mychal Judge, the New York
Fire Department chaplain who perished shortly after administering
last rites to a firefighter inside the burning World Trade
Center:
Many Roman Catholics find in him a positive, indeed shining, example of a priest at a time when the priestly image is suffering from the sexual abuse scandal in the Church. Another group has publicly sung Father Judge's praises since his death: gay rights advocates. Some have spoken openly about what they say was his homosexual orientation, and the former New York City fire commissioner, Thomas Von Essen, said that Father Judge had long ago come out to him. Still, the presence of the gay issue has caused some rancor among other friends, who resent what they say are attempts by the gay rights advocates to use Father Judge to further their agenda. [italics added]
And later:
Father Judge's name is also invoked by gay rights advocates, who maintain that the priest's sexuality was an important part of his make-up as a man and a priest.
Some of Father Judge's friends, however, are angry by what they see as opportunism by some gay rights advocates. These friends emphasize that any sexual orientation that he may have had is irrelevant. Some are hostile to the suggestion he was homosexual.
Actually, quite a number of Father Judge's gay friends
have said that he was very much at ease with his homosexual
orientation (though no one, as far as I know, has said he was
sexually active). Moreover, Father Judge worked with the gay
Catholic group Dignity, and marched in the alternative St.
Patrick's Day Parade. However, at a time when some in the Vatican
hierarchy are calling for purging homosexually oriented priests,
the presence of the saintly but gay Father Judge is clearly causing
some grief, and much denial. But unlike the shaky case for John
Walker Lindh's bent, the evidence is straight-forward (so to speak)
about Father Judge. Regardless, many will continue to have
difficulty viewing sanctity and homosexuality as coexisting
together.
--Stephen H. Miller