Shouldn't it be “Ted Haggard Is Complexly Heterosexual”? : Pharyngula

Search

Profile

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
• a longer profile of yours truly
• my calendar
• Nature Network
• RichardDawkins Network
• facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Atheist Nexus
• the Pharyngula chat room
(#pharyngula on irc.synirc.net)

• Quick link to the latest endless thread

Register for the Atheist Convention Melbourne 12-14 March 2010

I reserve the right to publicly post, with full identifying information about the source, any email sent to me that contains threats of violence.

I support Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Random Quote

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Other Information

2005 Koufax Award
Best Expert

2006 Weblogs Award

« Sou feliz sem crer em nenhum deus | Main | Attenborough disses Genesis »

Shouldn't it be “Ted Haggard Is Complexly Heterosexual”?

Category: Humor
Posted on: January 30, 2009 3:56 PM, by PZ Myers

Share this: Facebook Twitter Stumbleupon Reddit Email + More

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/93743

Comments

Posted by: Deepsix | January 30, 2009 4:09 PM

Wish I could see this at work. However, I did watch the special on HBO last night, which I enjoyed.

Here is a clip from his Larry King interview. Pay particular attention from the 4:10 mark on.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/01/30/lkl.haggard.sexual.pref.cnn

Posted by: Glen Davidson | January 30, 2009 4:11 PM

Small point, the Bible really says nothing about masturbation. It's just something thrown in later by the repressed.

More importantly for their position, if one says that god can't change Ted Haggard to be completely heterosexual, one is questioning god's power. OTOH, well, god can't design properly (apparently he exclusively used GAs running on a computer), heal amputees, or, well, do anything observable, so I don't know why "god choosing not to change" Ted and the rest can't be another colossal failure by god.

OK, it's impossible to understand any of their claims as being coherent with the rest.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592

Posted by: JD | January 30, 2009 4:12 PM

I think Roy is turning into Mark Russell.

Posted by: The Science Pundit | January 30, 2009 4:15 PM

This is a claasic! I remember it from the last time you posted it. This is one of my favorite RZ somgs; I'm glad it made it into Pelosi's film. It's things like that that make me sometimes wish I still had cable or stallite.

Posted by: JD | January 30, 2009 4:17 PM

Glen D:

Genesis 38:6-9 -- The sin of Onan. This is what christards "used" to think.

Posted by: Ploon | January 30, 2009 4:24 PM

Yeah, but wasn't Onan's crime pulling out and "spilling his seed" while dog had commanded him to impregnate? The sin wasn't masturbation, it was chosing not to knock up some broad just because the sky fairy told him to.

Posted by: Tulse | January 30, 2009 4:37 PM

Roy Zimmerman is full of win, and this may be his mostest win.

Posted by: recovering catholic | January 30, 2009 4:37 PM

I think PZ' allusion is to Haggard's statement that his sexuality is very complex...

Posted by: raven | January 30, 2009 4:47 PM

Ted should just give up. After people laugh at him, they laugh some more. After a while his 15 minutes of fame is over.

#10

Posted by: SEF | January 30, 2009 4:50 PM

while dog had commanded him to impregnate?

Not so much over any explicit divine command but for an attempt to cheat on the law of that time and place. Which was: that the woman should get to have the child of her husband's brother counted as being nominally her dead husband's own child. This in turn was so that her husband's inheritance passed to that child as heir instead of going to the brother who had agreed to marry the widow to do the deed. Onan wanted to cheat and keep the inheritance for himself. That was the real no-no.

#11

Posted by: E.V. | January 30, 2009 5:16 PM

Ted should just give up. After people laugh at him, they laugh some more. After a while his 15 minutes of fame is over.

When you're an attention junkie, even the most humiliating attention is better than none. It's why so many celebrities disgrace themselves when they should have retired years earlier before they became horrendous characatures of their former selves, i.e. Elizabeth Taylor, Cher, Stallone, etc.

#12

Posted by: Brownian | January 30, 2009 5:27 PM

From the interview linked to by Deepsix:

Ted Haggard: "I don't think the boxes work for me."

Well, duh.

#13

Posted by: Hairhead | January 30, 2009 5:28 PM

I don't think Ted Haggard is a homosexual. I think he's just a TWS (tm) -- a Total Whorey Slut. I mean, he's got five kids, is an exhibitionist, takes meth, has sex with men . . . and only the last one of that is "gay."

C'mon Ted, join the TWS Club and (as one film character would put it), "swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh. . ." You know you want to!

#14

Posted by: Janine, Supercilious Asshole | January 30, 2009 5:41 PM

Hairhead, you just gave me the flimsy excuse to post this.
He's A Whore!

#15

Posted by: Jolly Bloger | January 30, 2009 5:45 PM

My letter to Ted:

http://jollybloger.blogspot.com/2009/01/dear-ted-haggard.html

#16

Posted by: Sili | January 30, 2009 5:52 PM

I think this was the first Zimmerman I saw.

He keeps well, by the way. I was surprised to see how old kids he have on the video the other day.

#17

Posted by: The Tim Channel | January 30, 2009 5:56 PM

When I posted it last week on my blog and put a comment here for folks to follow, I named my blog Ted Haggard is Gay.

Original pharyngula post I pointed this out on:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/not_surprising_at_all.php

My original blog post on same:
http://thetimchannel.com/?p=358

Enjoy.

#18

Posted by: blf | January 30, 2009 6:11 PM

This is easily one of my favourite Zimmerman observations—alone with most of the others…!
Of course, at thr moment, I admit to being unusually coherent (thanks FSM for speling chekc), having oonlyh frunk several Belgium beers, a Kir, a bottle of French wine, and an apple ciderish finish, with dinner… (the advantagesa of living in France). hic!</STRONGE>!

#19

Posted by: E.V. | January 30, 2009 6:18 PM

Ted Haggard: "I don't think the boxes work for me...

... until it's my turn to be in the box."

#20

Posted by: Newfie | January 30, 2009 6:36 PM

My letter to Ted:

well done. not very jolly though, especially that last part.

#21

Posted by: Marion Delgado | January 30, 2009 7:08 PM

Ted Haggard is irreducibly complexly heterosexual, but at the same time, not intelligent, although he does show evidence of being rather designing. It's a tangled bank.

#22

Posted by: NewEnglandBob | January 30, 2009 7:32 PM

Hypocrites are complex!

From Wikipedia:

Hypocrisy (or the state of being a hypocrite) is the act of preaching a certain belief, religion or way of life, but not, in fact, holding these same virtues oneself.

#23

Posted by: Doc Bill | January 30, 2009 7:40 PM

Ted Haggard is irreducibly complexly heterosexual, but at the same time, not intelligent, although he does show evidence of being rather designing. It's a tangled bank.

We have a winner!

Post of the Year!

#24

Posted by: Helioprogenus | January 30, 2009 7:48 PM

Fucking brilliant!

Here we are guitarless and extending our dry wit as far as it will go, while people like Zim just absolutely shame us with his unbridled talent.

#25

Posted by: kamaka | January 30, 2009 10:39 PM

How could you post this, PZ?

Absolutely shameless.

What if jesus finds out?? Huh??

#26

Posted by: Headbhang | January 31, 2009 4:14 AM

LOL. Oh, the irony of Google Ads. "Evolution is a Lie", it says, pointing towards www.prophecyandtruth.com. Braindead, tragic hilarity there. A random quote from Book 3:

"Evolution cannot be proven and as defined practically and literally, it is a belief, not a science, and certainly not fact. It’s a belief. Anyone can believe anything they want, but that doesn’t make it true." SPOING!

Oh, and you want to know what the "Law of Science" says? "The Law of Science states that “all things left to themselves will tend towards disorder and decay.”". Wonderful.

#27

Posted by: Thor Blackbear | January 31, 2009 8:40 AM

He's dating Ann Coulter, but feels entitled to ridicule others?

#28

Posted by: Walton | January 31, 2009 9:07 AM

By Haggard's own account, he was sexually abused by one of his father's co-workers when he was seven years old. He ascribes his conflicted sexual feelings, in part, to this experience.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6235564&page=1

While I deplore his hypocrisy, I don't think we can entirely blame him for having conflicted feelings about his sexuality.

#29

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2009 11:46 AM

Yes, and he went into detail about wetting his pants in the 6th grade too. Does that also make you feel closer to Ted, Walton?
Inquiring minds want to know.

#30

Posted by: Luis | January 31, 2009 12:49 PM

PZ:

Thanks for continuing to link to Roy. You both confront hypocrisy directly and stand for honesty in our social discourse.

Please keep it up!

#31

Posted by: fly44d | January 31, 2009 3:26 PM

HA HA HA! The best laugh I've had all week!
Schism!

Ha ha ha!

:-)

#32

Posted by: John B. Sandlin | January 31, 2009 6:52 PM

So, if he's Heterosexual with complexities, doesn't that mean he's Bi?

JBS

#33

Posted by: Scoti Springfield Domeij | January 31, 2009 9:26 PM

What was the sin of Onan? It has nothing to do with masturbation or knocking up a broad. It’s connected to the promise of the Messiah that God gave to Abraham, which would flow through the bloodline of Judah. Long ago, I noticed that the women in Jesus' genealogy have "sexual issues." When Jesus died for each person's sins, it was for every sin, including sexual ones—incest, rape, adultery, prostitution. God allowed His Son to inherit all the miseries of human sin through Jesus’ human gene pool of sinners, so that Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross could pay the cost to grant freedom and grace to each and every person. Me. You.

Onan’s back story is this. Judah, through whom the Messiah was to descend, conceived three sons. The eldest, Er, died young and childless. His wife, Tamar, is given in levirate marriage to the second son, Onan. Onan doesn’t want to give his brother’s line a child nor does he seem to care that his sperm carries the biological seed of the Messiah. He dies. Judah is hesitant to give his third son to Tamar, reducing the biological possibilities for the genealogical line of the Messiah to continue. So Tamar disguises herself as a Canaanite prostitute and sits by the roadside, where her widowed father-in-law Judah propositions her. Their sexual union conceives twins. Mr. Self Righteous, Judah, hears that Tamar is pregnant and orders her executed for harlotry. Tamar produces items he left with her as a pledge for payment, which forces Judah to admit he’s the baby daddy. Their son, Peretz, is King David’s ancestor who, along with Tamar, is part of the Messianic line.

#34

Posted by: scrabcake | February 1, 2009 4:57 AM

Ok. I'm going to troll a bit just for fun. I know you're not supposed to announce that. Oops.

If I were Ted Haggard and had neither the advantage of being someone else looking objectively at Ted Haggard's life choices or of any sort of logical self examination, I might think the following:
That I am completely miserable. My family life is in a pile of flaming ruins, my career is dead, and I'm the butt of jokes across the country. Why is this? It's because I am gay! (Couldn't possibly be because I refused to reconcile being gay with my career. Noooo.) Then, I might start to think that THIS is why God doesn't want us to be gay--because it leads to the ruins of our families and our careers. Then, I might ask myself--if I am an alcoholic and I know that my need for booze has ruined my life, wouldn't it be my duty to advise others to stay away from the hooch? Would that still be hypocricy? Is that necessarily a bad thing? If I can't stay away from the booze even though it's ruined my life, is it a bad thing that I'm telling other people to stay away from it? After all, I should know.

Of course, since I'm scrabcake and not Ted Haggard, I can look at this and realize that the cause of Haggard's downfall has been his deception, self-loathing, and inability to channel his own experiences into empathy for others. If he'd quit the ministry, not gotten married, come out of the closet and moved to the Castro, Ted Haggard might not be what he is today, which is pathetic.

#35

Posted by: blf | February 1, 2009 6:42 AM

From http://www.prophecyandtruth.com (@26):

Did we evolve?

Yes. Next question, please?

These questions plague most people:

Evidence, please? I suppose some of the questions (below) do bother some people, and all of them may bother other people, but most people? Is that just people in ~~jesusland~~Woowoostan, or the Earth's entire population, or just what set of people?

* Who am I?

Checks his passport—Feck! Realises it's gonna expire in few months—Yep, same person I've been for the last ten years. Next?

* Where did I come from?

Just now? The toilet. I had to pee.

* Why am I here?

I'm bored and feeling a bit snarky. And wondering what this question, or indeed this list of questions, has to do with evolution?

* Where am I going when I die?

Either an incinerator or else a cardboard coffin.

* Is evolution really true?

Are you really that stupid?

* Is the Bible true?

In total, no. In parts, it does give good advice, such as the Golden Rule (which, by the way, is neither exclusive nor original to that book).

And anyways, WTF has this got to do with evolution?

* Are we really just an accident?

Yes. The chances of the determined sperm infecting the egg that become you is very small.

* Is there any purpose to our lives at all?

WTF has this got to do with evolution?

#36

Posted by: hery | January 25, 2010 8:23 AM

This in turn was so that her husband's inheritance passed to that child as heir instead of going to the brother who had agreed to marry the widow to do the deed