The Gay Bachelor

(Moving things over from my old blog)

It's all over the news: Jake Pavelka, the former star of ABC's "The Bachelor", is in some deep doodoo. Once he and the girl he chose on the season finale broke up, the proverbial shit began hitting the fans. People from his past have been popping up left and right and giving us all insight into the REAL man many know as the "perfect gentleman." Now, I'm not very big on things like this, but there is one part of this situation that intrigued me: allegations of his homosexuality.
-Jake was seen getting very cozy and intimate with a fellow castmate, Juan Barbieri, at a well-known gay bar in West Hollywood, Mickey's. While Juan maintains that he himself is not gay, he says "Jake might be gay." Since the big breakup, he also declares, "Maybe he can call me now and we can hang out!"

-Jake was very against any intimacy with the female "love of his life", and though he denies this, another of his exes says that this is very much like what happened with her. She says that initially they would have sex often, but suddenly he put the brakes on their intimate relationship, supposedly for "religious convictions." Jake was often known to be huddled in a closet with a Bible, refusing to come out.
Personally, I find it hard to believe that people could be so oblivious as to what is going on here. No, I don't mean that this is some elaborately planned attack on Jake; I mean that he is in the closet(no pun intended), and desperately trying to use anything he can to rid himself of his homosexuality.
Now, I say that it should be obvious to everyone, but it may just be this apparent to me because of my past struggles with my own sexuality. Not even a year ago, I attempted to ask God for forgiveness, and believed that through Him anything could be fixed. That worked just as well as the two or three times I had attempted religious intervention, and ended in the same way: strengthening my conviction that there is no God, and if He does exist, he doesn't care about sexuality.
Many people would say, "But he was looking for love in WOMEN, not men, on 'The Bachelor'." To them, that says that he isn't gay; it gives me more evidence. I've tried this 'de-homoing' technique at least twice in my life. The logic works like this: "I've never been with a girl. I'm not attracted to them. Maybe I have to be with one in order to activate my heterosexuality." He's obviously tried this at least as many times as me, with the same result: nada.
He needs help. Not for his homosexuality, but for his denial of it. It seems that our homophobic society has convinced him that his true feelings are wrong, and this view has hurt more people than it has helped. Not only would counseling be helpful for him, but it would assure the girls that he has used in the past that it was not their fault, it would save other girls from being used in the future, and it would help him come to terms with who he really is and be able to find happiness.