Facebook’s Gaydar The social media’s role in the Russian interference / collusion investigation was neatly clarified by the testimony of one Chris Wylie, a whistleblower who once worked for Cambridge Analytica. Wylie has testified before both the British Parliament and the U.S. Senate 
about the company’s use of Facebook data to target voters with pinpoint accuracy and then barrage them with just the right spin on the day’s fake news. Among the revelations was that Cambridge Analytica (and presumably Facebook) can determine if you’re gay—even if you’re not out in your profile—based on just a few likes and links and the help of an algorithm that relies on the dark art of psychographics. Now anyone who saw Wylie testifying knew the minute he opened his mouth—no, before that: the minute we saw his shocking pink hair and Elton-John-style glasses—that he’s someone Facebook would have flagged as a you-know-what. Not that we needed a complicated algorithm (or even gaydar) to figure it out. Anyway, gay or not, Wylie has become a key figure in revealing how the social network managed to convince so many people that up was down and out was bad leading up to the 2016 election.
A New Species of Predator If cases of sexual abuse by Cath-olic priests have been tapering off, evangelical ministers seem to be rushing into the breach. And if the behavior of the former could be seen as a natural consequence of priestly celibacy, the new trend is harder to explain. Here are a few recent examples, each with its own unique weirdness:
• The case Ronnie Gorton, the former pastor of Awakening Church in Atoka, Tennessee, is remarkable for the sheer number of underage boys, 47, who have fingered him as a sexual predator. Gorton’s modus operandi was to invite the boys over to the house that he shared with his wife, get them a little drunk, show them some porn, and then make his move. (Did it help that Gorton is quite good-looking?) And if this sounds like a lot of victims for a town of 8,387, police expect still more to come forward.
• Elsewhere in Tennessee, in Nashville, Pastor Matthew Dennis Patterson has been accused of molesting both underage boys and girls, but mostly boys. Patterson, who was pastor of the Nolensville Road Baptist Church, is accused of touching the kids inappropriately, but what’s unusual is that he apparently liked to have them sit on his face in their underwear (these guys do get specific in their turn-ons). Eight victims have come forward and more are expected. Reports also noted that Patterson has been in the news before—as a vocal opponent of a bill to ban anti-gay discrimination in 2003. What are the odds?
• A third case involves a fairly high-profile clergyman and was widely reported. Once again the accused perp is an evangelical minister who allegedly engaged in sexual improprieties with an underage male. Meet Acton Bowen, 37, of Hoover, Alabama, a youth pastor who founded the nationally prominent Acton Bowen Outreach Ministries. Bowen is being charged with second-degree sex abuse, which in Alabama means that the victim was twelve to sixteen years old. Since his initial arrest, four more boys have come forward, Bowen’s wife has left him, and his bond has been raised to $500,000. A question that may well come up at his hearing is whether he founded the self-named Outreach Ministry expressly to gain access to teenage boys, or whether these urges arose only after the operation was in full swing. Somehow it seems to matter whether it was merely opportunistic or all part of some master plan.
Just What You’d Expect It was only a matter of time: someone was bound to have the brilliant idea to create a straight mock-off of the gay flag. What one can’t help noticing immediately is that the 
parody is just plain ugly. But, of course, it had to be. If the image of the rainbow, the full spectrum of visible light, is a symbol of natural beauty, an archetype even, its opposite would have to be as drab and hideous as possible. And they’ve done it! Granted, the color range had to be narrow to avoid looking “gay,” but they’ve managed to do the entire thing in various shades of beige! So in one fell swoop they’ve yielded both the entire color spectrum and good taste.
