What the hell is going on?
I suppose this is a follow up piece to my expose on Republican Mark Foley, who was discovered to have been involved in a House page scandal where he tried to solicit underage teenage boys for some good ol' fashioned clean Southern buggery. Now, splased across the headlines around the globe, comes an even more colossal and bizarre scandal. Seems Ted Haggard, pastor of the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs, and the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and one of the 25 most influential evangelicals, according to Time magazine, has been up to some naughty, naughty secret business.

Apparently, Rev. Haggard has been soliciting male prostitutes for quite some time for clandestine, drug-fueled homoerotic binges. One of his man-whores apparently ratted him out when he found out who the guy was. It seems that Rev. Haggard has been VERY vocal about the detested and abhorrent practice of homosexuality, and has been lobbying pretty heavily in Washington against gay marriage and other gay-friendly bills. So, when this male prostitute found out that the guy he was pleasuring for money in a very "gay" way, was spending all his energy trying to defame and destroy homosexuality, this prostitute smelled a hypocritical rat. Interestingly enough, the prostitute claims that Haggard has been having these trysts about once a month for a number of years, while Haggard claims to have "never had sex with a male prostitute," and to have only bought crystal meth out of "temptation," but then threw the drugs away before using them. Hmmm... what a strange difference in accounts... I wonder which one is telling the truth? (And this brings up a delicious irony: How is it that a crystal meth-addled man whore can be more truthful than a mega-pastor who is president of the largest evangelical parachurch agency in North America?) Then, after Rev. Haggard was de-Reverened by his church, and de-presidented by the NAE, he finally admitted to some sexual misconduct. Wow.

I guess this doesn't really need to be said, but WHY WHY WHY would you, if you were a closet homosexual and drug fiend, would you become a pastor of a conservative evangelical church, take on the highly public role of NAE president, and spend all your time and energy trying to eradicate the very same homosexuality that you were secretly indulging in? It's just so phony and ridiculous and hurtful and deceptive, and can't help the NAE cause very much... What about all those thousands of people who go to this guy's church every week and look up to him as a "man of god?" I know that everyone makes bad choices and so forth... but this is just so stupidly hypocritical that I'm going to start a list of all the people who make crazy public statements from positions of religious power against any of the "liberal" causes - because then I'll know that they are probably the worst offenders of those sins in their own secret lives.

J$  ¶ 12:24 PM