I know it's probably wrong of me, but I find this *really* funny...

[JennyC]

Ted Haggard admitted Friday that he bought methamphetamine from Mike Jones (the gay escort), but denied that he had a gay relationship with him. 

A quick search on “Methamphetamine” tells me that it is schedule II controlled drugs, that is available only via prescription, and distribution is carefully controlled and monitored by the DEA.  But due to its notorious nature linked to abuse and addiction, medical professionals are averse to prescribing it.

The way I understand is being gay is not illegal, but in possession of controlled drugs without prescription is.   Let’s admit that law normally sets a lower standard to regular people’s social behavior than religious moral value does.  You would think one may choose to admit a behavior that is against a questionable moral value than to admit conduct illegal activity.   But no surprise when Ted Haggard had to pick lesser of the two evils, he chose to admit getting meth from Mike Jones to take off some heat from the scandal.  Way to go for Pastor Haggard for setting an example for his congregation. 

What’s more irritating to me is the reason behind his choice.  While we are all here thinking there is nothing wrong being gay or being different, there is a lot of people still think otherwise, and they have been told repeated so by all those predominant Christian advocates.  It drugs their mind and becomes the truth they hold on to.  Particularly with the issue being more on the front line than ever before in the recent years, the resistance becomes more ferocious. I think anyone who may be secretly relieved that he admitted to one allegation but not the other was just as hypocrite as he is.  Urrg!

He has repeatedly lied on camera since yesterday, including denying he knew Mike Jones. And what’s more is people already caught him lying again.  While he maintains that "I was buying it for me, but I never used it. I was tempted." The voice message suggested otherwise.

"Hi Mike, this is Art," one call began, according to the station. "Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply."

get any more ??

As to the other allegation, what the heck, he may later come out to say he is not gay, he was just tempted.  So the lies continue…

[moremojo]

I'll say it again.  7 November cannot get here fast enough.

Barb, I voted early (yesterday to be precise). I'm anxious too for November 7th to get here so we can hopefully get some of these bums out of the house(s). I think there's a real chance the Dems might be able to recapture the House of Representatives. As for my state's gubernatorial race, I fear there's a very real probability that one of the most venal Republicans to hold office in recent years will win another, much to be lamented term.

As for Haggard, I think he's history insofar as any kind of church leadership is concerned. What he has already admitted to is bad enough, from an hypocrisy angle, to warrant his permanent exclusion from any presumed moral high ground.

[ednbarby]

Barb, I voted early (yesterday to be precise). I'm anxious too for November 7th to get here so we can hopefully get some of these bums out of the house(s). I think there's a real chance the Dems might be able to recapture the House of Representatives. As for my state's gubernatorial race, I fear there's a very real probability that one of the most venal Republicans to hold office in recent years will win another, much to be lamented term.

As for Haggard, I think he's history insofar as any kind of church leadership is concerned. What he has already admitted to is bad enough, from an hypocrisy angle, to warrant his permanent exclusion from any presumed moral high ground.

I voted yesterday, too, as a matter of fact.  So did my husband.  I'm afraid the Republican is probably going to win the gubernatorial race down here, too (what state are you in, again?).  But I too hold high hopes for reclaiming the House.

Whether or not the Church disowns Haggard, the larger issue is whether the exposure of his hypocrisy will put a dent in the gay marriage issue in Colorado.  My fear is that all it will serve to do is bring out even more religious zealots in that state to vote to ban it.  Still, I admire Jones for trying to make a difference if that was indeed his intention.

And I'm with you, too, Jenny - what a mad world it is we live in where drug abuse is considered the lesser of two evils where the other evil is homosexuality.  That the latter is even considered an evil at all is mad enough as it is.

[moremojo]

I'm afraid the Republican is probably going to win the gubernatorial race down here, too (what state are you in, again?). 

I'm in Texas, currently governed (and I use that term charitably) by Rick (rhymes with a vulgar term for the male anatomy) Perry. Perry and Bush are surely two of the most contemptible people ever to hold the office of Governor in my native state, at least in my lifetime.

[nakymaton]

Whether or not the Church disowns Haggard, the larger issue is whether the exposure of his hypocrisy will put a dent in the gay marriage issue in Colorado.  My fear is that all it will serve to do is bring out even more religious zealots in that state to vote to ban it.  Still, I admire Jones for trying to make a difference if that was indeed his intention.

There are actually two votes in Colorado... one to change the law to create domestic partnerships, and one to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage. I'm scared that the homophobes will get riled up about somebody saying their leader is gay, and come out in force. (Or not come out, as in the case of Haggard.) But I've got a lot less trust in Colorado voters than Lee does... maybe she's right, and the domestic partnerships are bound to win. I don't know.

Argh. I just wish there was somebody in public, in the so-called liberal media, pointing out that using meth is bad, and being gay isn't. 

(I've voted already, too. But I'm still pretty stressed out about the whole thing, and mostly I wish Colorado Springs would just go away...)

[ednbarby]

Argh. I just wish there was somebody in public, in the so-called liberal media, pointing out that using meth is bad, and being gay isn't. 

Oh, Superman, where are you now?  Where did things go wrong somehow?
These men of steel, men of power are losing control by the hour.
Too many men, too many people making too many problems.
And not much love to go 'round.
Can't you see, this is a Land of Confusion.

~ Phil Collins, "The World We Live In"

Yeah - I'm waiting for a knight (or lady) in shining armor to come and speak the truth.  I'd pin my hopes on Anderson Cooper to come through for me on this one, but for obvious reasons, I think he'd shy away from it.  Don't count Keith Olbermann out - he's one of the (very, very few) good guys.  And in a pinch, there's always Jon Stewart.  If he doesn't jump into this pool hip-deep, I don't know who will.

[JennyC]

And in a pinch, there's always Jon Stewart.  If he doesn't jump into this pool hip-deep, I don't know who will.

And Bill Maher.  He probably will make this into his new rules.  I am sure all late night comedians are going to jump on this.

[delalluvia]

I'm in Texas, currently governed (and I use that term charitably) by Rick (rhymes with a vulgar term for the male anatomy) Perry. Perry and Bush are surely two of the most contemptible people ever to hold the office of Governor in my native state, at least in my lifetime.

Well said.  The current state of our government is going to force me to do something during the voting that I've never done before.  Damn them.

And yes, these evangelical religious nuts live by hypocritical standards and are the first to forgive themselves so they feel lily white and are quick to pounce on those who can't 'forgive' them as unChristian. 

Pathetic.

[ednbarby]

Well said.  The current state of our government is going to force me to do something during the voting that I've never done before.

Vote for a Democrat? 

(My father says he's voting for not just one, but a few, for the first time since 1968.)

[Lynne]

Barb - I don't think it's 'wrong' of you.  I think it's just human nature to try to find the humor/irony in something that is really too sad and troubling to grasp fully.  And then when you add the hypocrisy factor...just human nature.

I thought this was a really insightful article about the fallout from this scandal related a bit to the election results.  Bold type is mine.
-Lynne

Old Time Politics of Hatred
Ellen Goodman

BOSTON - I suppose it's hard to count Ted Haggard as a direct casualty of the 2006 election since his name wasn't on any ballot. But if the evangelist had not been a prime supporter of a Colorado amendment banning gay marriage, Mike Jones might never have seen him on TV and said, "Oh my God, it's Art." The gay prostitute might never have outed the minister of the New Life Church as a customer of rentaboy or a referral for methamphetamine.

So the Sunday before the election, Pastor Ted resigned, labeling himself a "deceiver and a liar." He no longer heads the National Association of Evangelicals, nor does he field calls from the president. He's embarked on religious rehab, more properly known as "spiritual restoration," an odd name that seems to combine New Age steps and fundamentalist beliefs.

Still, what strikes me in the aftermath is not just the hypocrisy of Pastor Ted. I keep flashing back onto this sentence in his confession: "There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life." Haggard was not referring to marital infidelity or drugs, but to his gayness.

Haggard seemed like a kinder, gentler and greener evangelical than many on the religious right. Yet he once equated Gay Pride Day with Murderer's Pride Day and looked to the Bible for the last word in science as well as religion. This was not just a man split between his walk and his talk. This was a man repulsed by himself.

How do we think about this repulsion? In the aftermath of his revelation, reactions were as bifurcated as our culture.

Sympathy came in two varieties.

On the one hand there were congregants, fellow ministers and letters-to-the-editor writers who heard a man wrestling with real demons. Their sympathy was for a sinner.

On the other hand there were people who heard a man wounded by the culture of demonization. Their sympathy was for a man primed for repression and deception by the teaching of homosexuality as a sin.

We've heard echoes of this duality before. When "Brokeback Mountain" was presented as the ultimate gay cowboy story, the religious right found its own moral message in the movie: Look at the damage done by the evil of homosexuality. But other moviegoers saw the culprit of the tragedy in the repressive atmosphere that hung over these two men and the landscape.

Haggard's deception and repulsion are, in some ways, lagging indicators of changing attitudes and science. Thirty years ago, only 13 percent of Americans thought homosexuality was inborn while 56 percent thought it came from the way people were raised. This year, for the first time, more Americans believe that homosexuality is inborn (42 percent) than due to upbringing (37 percent). More gays, more friends, families, co-workers have come to believe that gayness is not a choice, let alone a sin.

Nevertheless, this week Catholic bishops meeting in Baltimore offered guidelines for ministering to gays that might have been - indeed were - from the distant past. The tone, said one bishop, was meant to be "positive, pastoral and welcoming" to gay Catholics. But the message was that "homosexual inclinations" are "disordered," that gays should live in chastity, and that they are banned from marrying or adopting. In short, gays are welcome with open arms into the church as long as they declare themselves sinners and reject - repel? - their own sexuality.

In many places we are witnessing another way out of the repulsion - the creation of open heterosexual unions, the establishment of gay families with all their ordinary, imperfect, daily struggles. We are watching the incremental acceptance of same-sex benefits and civil unions, and, at least in Massachusetts, gay marriage.

I suspect that Haggard's idea of "spiritual restoration" is the restoration of the closet. "From time to time," he wrote, "the dirt that I thought was gone would resurface." If anything he seems to want more tools to fight the "dirt. " This charismatic man may well reappear, "cured," as a poster boy for the ex-gay movement enlisted to preach "hope" for the homosexual.

But those whose families and workplaces and neighborhoods include openly gay men and women will always see this lost soul as a poster boy for the real damage caused by the old-time ministry of self-hate.

Ellen Goodman is a Boston-based syndicated writer. Her e-mail address is [email protected].
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061116/EDIT/611160310/1003