Well, I'm shocked -- simply shocked, I tell you!
After Pastor Ted Haggard publically denied allegations of a homosexual affair, senior church officials admitted that Pastor Ted Haggard has confessed to some of the claims made by a former male escort.
Thursday morning, Mike Jones, a former male escort, was a guest on a Denver radio talk show and said Pastor Haggard paid him for sex over the past 3 years. Jones also claims Haggard used drugs with him.
Tsk, tsk.
Currently, the situation is being investigated by an independent panel of leaders from four outside churches. The leaders are from Colorado Springs, Larkspur, Westminster and Louisiana. The panel's purpose is to decide if Haggard will be exonerated, released from his duties or restored to his pastorship.
Haggard is president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the largest evangelical group in America as well as the founder and senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Haggard and his wife, Gayle, have five children.
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Yeah, no surprise here either. These holier-than-thou men and women are nothing but a bunch of self-loathing hypocrites. I really hope the voters of Colorado are intelligent enough to see through their veil of lies and vote no on their absurd marriage amendment.
Yes, I can say "hypocrite" but I think this is a real tragedy. This guy has been living a closeted and inauthentic life, denying his own true self. What could be more tragic than that?
Yes, I'm happy to see the shit hit the fan and the religious right exposed as hypocritical liars. But I'm also sad for this guy on a personal level. He must be truly miserable every day of his life.
I hope someone can find a way to help him come to terms with his sexuality and become a healthy human being.
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Regarding CO, it looks like the marriage = man + woman ammendment may pass, but at the same time a referendum to provide civil unions to same sex partners also looks like it will easily pass.
That he publicly led anti-gay politicking? That he can be held responsible for some of the gay-bashing that drives gays into the closet?
CulpaOh ! PLEEZ! The damage these moral midgets have done to our country is unmeasurable.. Why call for understanding of Haggard;s torment please?
Now Mr. ^& Mrs Conservative m you can't dare vote for Rethuglican candidates,, they consist of crooks, liars, adulterous s child molesters, and your biggest fear, they're GAY! Just stay home and give the rest of us a change to tale this country back!
I know this is not a civil epistle: either is war, attack on civil liberties and the constitution!, and the continued assault on those leas able to defend themselves!
This Bush cabal has attempted to dissemble government by bankrupting our Treasury. They have led a anti-science, anti-gay, anti women;s rights movement.
Duping the Christian Right (not a hard task), to carry the banner of Righteousness!
My planet is dying I feel culpable for tolerating these monsters! What is my problem? Mea Culpa Mea Culpa Mea Maxima culpa!
When a person has no moderation in his/her life, can you be truly surprised when he crashes after riding the edge of the envelope in every way? What is so killingly funny is the way evangelicals have demonized the same gay life that some of them are living under cover. I saw an ad for a meeting earlier this year on saving heterosexual marriage in which Haggard figured prominently. One of the TNR blogs, The Plank, has a link to the ad if you scroll down to the 11/2/06 postings. Hysterically funny. Another rump rider for Christ.
feel sorry for his wife and children, publicly humiliated, and for his wife, who knows what kind of diseases he could have passed on from sex with prostitutes.
he was quoted today in the NYT as having "admitted today that he had purchased the illegal drug methamphetamine from a gay escort in Denver, but denied that he ever had sex with the man."
that's like, "I shot the sheriff but I did not shoot the deputy."
I'm a Colorado Springs local, and as the political ads have been getting more and more hideous, I've tuned out of the news in the last few weeks, so this is the first I've heard of this, and you've just made my day.
Until about two months ago I drove past New Life Church every morning on my way to work. I wish you guys could see it: the fucker is HUGE: it's the size of a small but respectable airport, and it's surrounded by maybe 40 world flags, each on poles slightly taller than the 2.5-story building itself. The building--at least the part you can see, which is the World Prayer Center--has a round top, pointed at the center, that, with the flags, gives it the air of an unimaginably huge circus tent.
Appropriate for the shenanigans that are going on, apparently. Haggard is a local fixture around here, the same as Pikes Peak and the Citadel mall. Mustafa is right: you would not believe the trouble Haggard stirs up around here and in the nation as a whole. He is blatantly political, and inculcates both political leanings and direct voting instructions upon his congregation from the pulpit, proudly asserting his ties to the Bush administration and advertising that he works to sway public policy. He is one of the primary proponents of the "protection" of "marriage"--those two terms in scare quotes because what constitutes protection and what is meant by marriage are a matter of some debate. At any rate, he's been on about the evils of homosexuality for some time--and every month or so the local liberal newspaper, *The Independent,* will have some outrageously bizarre quote from him about how Planned Parenthood eats babies or something equally ridiculous.
I don't know if I can feel sad for him, but I do wonder. With how much preaching he does, how active he is in politics and religion, and how LONG he's been involved in each, to be gay and be a drug abuser--to do both, at the level at which he does the former--he has to be seriously fucked up to be able to maintain that level of hypocrisy, because hypocrisy *costs* you something until you don't have anything left and you're a little crazy. I mean that in an at-least-partially sympathetic way. It takes a lot out of you to keep selling something you don't believe in because your life will collapse if you don't.
At least, it does for normal humans. There are some people who seem to be missing the conscience switch in their heads, and they can rationalize anything. But wouldn't it be interesting to feel what he feels. Does he actually believe any of it? Does he think he's going to hell? Does he feel guilty and dirty and sticky every time he thinks about Jesus, and does he hope Jesus' attention is elsewhere at the moment? Is when he's having sex with a man the only time something in his head sparks, or is he doing it as a power trip, to punish all gays for their behavior? Or is it something else? Did he want to see what sex that was unquestionably for pleasure and not for reproduction was like? Or sex with no emotional commitment? Did he tell himself he was just trying to understand homosexual desire? Did he need an experience where he wasn't in charge, or where he could let his power run unfettered, the way he couldn't be with his congregation, his organizations, his wife, and his children? Did he do his sermons high because it was the only way he could drum up the physical energy and the passion?
It's like watching a drama on HBO, but so far beyond believable, so *cliched,* almost, that no one would buy it if it was fiction.
Re The Scarlet Pervygirl
What you are describing are the classic symptoms of a sociopath. The good Reverand Haggard is able to keep his worlds separate because he has no conscience and can lie to himself and others with impunity.