Out of the Closet
2006-11-06, 12:55 p.m.

While driving to work last Friday, I heard over the news that Ted Haggard had been accused of a three year homosexual affair. I couldn�t help but laugh out load when I heard it. I wasn�t so much laughing because I wish this guy ill will and was reveling in his misfortune, but more because yet ANOTHER religious figure, vehemently apposed to gay marriage, is in fact, gay. At first he of course denied the entire thing- he had never met his accuser, let alone ever had sex with him or buy meth off of him. I checked the new periodically through the day Friday, and by lunchtime, he admitted to having met the man for a �massage� and admitted to having bought the drugs, but said he had thrown them away and never used them. I told a coworker of mine, �Just wait. By Monday, he will have admitted to everything.� On my drive home, they were interviewing members of his church in Colorado. A lot of them were still in denial, saying they didn�t believe the accusations, it was all a political stunt, etc etc etc. The inability of these people to acknowledge the truth, even while being faced with a mountain of evidence, is staggering to me. Case in point: Commenting on his blog, a fellow evangelical pastor, Mark Driscoll, had this to say:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors� wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband�s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

There you have it, folks. Rather than admit that one of his fellow pastors is a homosexual, this guy actually has the audacity to lay blame on Haggard�s wife. So not only is this poor woman having to cope with the realization that her husband a) is Gay, and b) has been having an affair for the past three years, this fuckwit would have her believe it is her own damn fault.

Andrew Sullivan I think summed up what this all means the best:

"There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," - pastor Ted Haggard, referring, I suppose, to his homosexual orientation.
For those who still - amazingly - believe that being gay is somehow a "choice," consider Haggard. If he could have chosen not to be gay, don't you think he would have? Even though he apparently believes being gay is "repulsive and dark" (while it is, in fact, just another wonderful way to be human), he still cannot prevail against it. It is integral to him. It has been "all of [his] adult life". One day, he may realize, and I pray he does, that the only dark and repulsive thing is the closet, the betrayal of his wife and children, the destruction of a church, and the demonization of others in the same boat - all as a function of his own inability to face the truth. What is dark and repulsive is dishonesty. There is no commandment not to be gay. There is a commandment not to bear false witness. Haggard bore false witness - to himself, to his wife, to his traumatized kids, to his fellow gay men and women. repeatedly, pathologically, self-destructively. The right response for Christians is compassion and forgiveness. But also hope: hope that this will help spread the truth about what being gay actually is. Face it, Ted. Face the truth. It will set you - and so many others - free.

Amen, to that! I am willing to bet that a very central part of Mr. Haggard is more at peace- and happier- than he has been in years. Now that he is finally confronting the truth, perhaps he can start dealing with it in a constructive, meaningful way rather than branding those like him as unrepentant sinners. And if someone like Ted Haggard can do that, perhaps his followers and other like him can finally begin acting like true Christians.

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