This is an ugly story

[pegkerr]

Evangelical leader quits amid male escort's allegations

Top evangelical leader has admitted "some guilt," a church leader says.

It's hard to know what to say about this, other than the hypocrisy smells awful. I feel sorry for his wife and kids. I feel sorry for his church. I must admit a certain amount of sympathy for both Haggard and his accuser, too. It reminds me of the Foley scandal; it was hard to know what to say about that, too.

The man accusing him says that he felt he had to do it because of Haggard's support for Colorado's proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

I have no idea what, if any, of the allegations are true. I will just say in a general way that it is hard for everyone when a leader is shown to have feet of clay.

I did a lot of thinking about the closet when I wrote The Wild Swans. I think that it twists people terribly. If the accusations are true, I would have no trouble believing them, sadly, as shocking as the hypocrisy is, because I think that is what the closet does to you--you get so used to lying that you lose track of your essential self.

If it is true, then I do think the accuser did the right thing. Nothing works to banish the moral stink of hypocrisy better than bright sunlight, as painful as it is to have ugliness revealed.

Very sordid and sad. No one ends up looking good here--Haggard, his church or his accuser.

Edited to add: This was a comment I made to minnehaha B, and I thought I'd add it here.

I don't know very much about Haggard at all. I think when I mean I feel sympathy for him, I mean not for him exactly, but (if the accusations are accurate) sympathy for how he has twisted himself.

I don't know if you've read The Wild Swans (and I'm not asking you to say whether you have or haven't). But what I'm getting at is the utter devastation that William felt near the end of the book, when he thinks of the speech of excommunication, believing to the core of his soul it should apply to him and he is therefore damned for all eternity--and blows that candle out. I honestly think that is the most sadly bleak moment in the book. That sadness is what I feel sympathetic about--how a man who feels a religious calling and wants to be moral gets it so utterly wrong because of what he feels his religion forces him to believe about homosexuality, and feels himself to be damned accordingly.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

In this and in all cases, I tend to believe more and more that the truth is an important thing - and this is not presupposing anything about Haggard's honest, but to say that living closeted it destructive to the spirit. I know I couldn't do it.

At the same time, I have trouble imagining a personal split so extreme - publicly espousing, on a professional level, one kind of behaviour, while practising another. Is this the attraction of sin? Or a kind of masochism? Or simply interior confusion, well hidden? I can't get my head around it.

[trogon.livejournal.com]

At the same time, I have trouble imagining a personal split so extreme - publicly espousing, on a professional level, one kind of behaviour, while practising another. Is this the attraction of sin? Or a kind of masochism? Or simply interior confusion, well hidden? I can't get my head around it.

Here is my take on why so many gay Republicans who get involuntarily "outed" tend to be, in their public statements and voting records, virulently anti-gay:

They have always had to hide and always had to be secretive. Why they were initially drawn to the Republicans, who knows; maybe economic issues, maybe their family had always been Republican, maybe when they realized their same-sex attractions they turned to religious extremism in a futile attempt to make them go away. At any rate, they end up as deeply closeted people, since they have to hide a huge part of their identity from their closest friends and colleagues.

And they see gay people who don't have to do this, who are able to live freely and openly, and it *hurts*. They're *jealous*. But rather than try to leave the closet, and work against the need for it, they try to force everyone back in -- to make all gay people suffer as much as they have. This is how I've interpreted it, and what I interpret Peg's reference to the "twisting" effect of the closet to mean. Of course, many people do otherwise -- but they aren't the ones involved in outing scandals, since you can't out someone who is out by their own choice.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

And they see gay people who don't have to do this, who are able to live freely and openly, and it *hurts*. They're *jealous*. But rather than try to leave the closet, and work against the need for it, they try to force everyone back in --

What a scary thought. Isn't that pretty much a definition of evil - a contrived and conscious effort to spread misery? And with motives of lust and deception - it's enough to get me citing the Seven Deadly Sins. (Don't mind me, I was watching Marlowe last night.)

Twisted indeed.

And here I have just been reading about, and talking about, the good that actor John Barrowman has done in being openly gay and a good gay role model for the young - successful, positive, open and joyful. What a contrast!

Okay, so it's easier for an actor (outside of the U.S., anyway). It's hard to judge the influences that make anyone the way they are. But it's really difficult for me to find any shred of human decency in that kind of vicious self-perpetuated contradiction.

It is very unpleasant tryin to get inside this kind of thinking.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I also think that some people have deeply internalized an ethos which tells them they are terrible people for feeling the way they do. Shame goes bone-deep. They hate themselves for being gay, but at least they try to do the right thing anyhow by silencing themselves and advocating what's good and right. They see other gay people who apparently don't even care. They don't make an effort to do what's right, instead, they self-righteously justify self-indulgent, shameless behavior. They don't hate themselves and try to be better, the way they should. Weren't they brought up to know what's right? Don't they have any sense of decency? Do they think it's easy, hating yourself and rigidly censoring your every impulse? No, it's not easy, but it's the right thing to do.

People who cause themselves untold suffering for the sake of a rigid morality which they are deeply invested in, who *believe* that they are bad people who are struggling to make up for their inherent sins...surely it's no wonder that they're the least tolerant of all of people who don't do likewise?

Glg. I can't take this. Once, while I was working for a queer public education nonprofit, I was writing up brief sumaries for members on a variety of topics, and one of them was the "ex-gay" movement. I almost couldn't do it. I could hardly stand to read the literature, and felt ill, moving my fingers across the keyboard, typing it up. It's not just the hatred directed at someone like me. I can read ranting and just feel annoyed or tired or angry or even amused. It was the all-encompassing rigid self-hatred which obliterated any hope, any opening, any possibility of any other perspective.

I have started typing without looking at what I'm writing, because I find it so disturbing. Time to think about something else.

Re: It is very unpleasant tryin to get inside this kind of thinking.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

I will say also that this kind of virulent virtue is not unique to homophobia and being closted. It's women who have lost great amounts of weight through punitive measures, losing health, beauty, and happiness - and the ability to think without obsessiveness about food - in the process, who are most vicious in attacking fat women who 'don't make an effort to take care of themselves' - e.g., like their bodies, or don't wish to engage in a process so destructive, themselves. It's parents who are miserable through self-sacrifice who are least sympathetic to their children's impulses to self-ingulgence. I dare say it was teachers who were born left-handed themselves and forced to use their right hands, who were most harsh about forcing their own students to do likewise. I had to suffer. Why do you think you should escape?

Re: It is very unpleasant tryin to get inside this kind of thinking.

[sweetjannette.livejournal.com]

I can't say exactly, but often we make such misakes as occupation with nnot our business. I don't mean such business which does not thouch us, I mean business which we can't understand to make a write decision.

[klostes.livejournal.com]

It's a proven statistic that in rigid, hierarchical societies like these evangelical churches there is far more abuse, physical, mental, and sexual, being hidden than in more open and relaxed communities. Having grown up in and around them, it's not unusual to see a pastor or other elder with otherwise sterling character brought low by problems with pornography and prostitution. In some part, I think it's the focus on "avoiding sin" that keeps those "sins" in the forefront of the mind and makes them that much harder to avoid. It's a vicious circle.

So much of belonging to a group like this is all about hiding who you really are and presenting a good face to the public on Sunday morning. You can't risk the appearance of being anything but perfect, so it becomes second nature to hide the truth of yourself. Add in the elements mentioned below, jealousy of and anger at those who aren't trying and don't care to be "righteous", and yeah, this kind of situation becomes a normal mode of operating for folks.

I will be far more shocked if the rumors aren't true than if they are. And while I do feel sorry for the wife and kids, who knows? Maybe they have their own secrets they're hiding and this will be the catalyst that spurs them to seek their own freedom, rather than submit to being twisted and wounded by their own closets.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Well, the more we hear about the case, the more it seems to be (a) true and (b) utterly stupid.

while I do feel sorry for the wife and kids, who knows? Maybe they have their own secrets they're hiding and this will be the catalyst that spurs them to seek their own freedom, rather than submit to being twisted and wounded by their own closets.

I can hope. But usually it seems that once a person is mired in a fundamentalist mindset, the ability to see past the barriers disappears.

[klostes.livejournal.com]

Actually, I am one. Nearly twenty years in the fundy world, and about eight out of it. It happens more often than you might think, but most are still in contact with their families so they tend to just be quietly apostate rather than shouting out to the world. I've cut off all contact with my own family, because one of the things they simply could not accept was that I chose to deliberately reject their god and their way of life.

It's events like this with Haggard that will make a few people think and take that closer look, and there will be those who leave because of it. That's one reason they fight so hard to keep these things from a) happening and b) being made public.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You sound to me like a success story. I'm sorry to hear it meant being cut off from your family - that must be difficult. And I suppose a lot of people compromise because they don't want to cut themselves off from their family.

It's a whole strange world to me; my family were sort of socialist Protestants and they thought the will of God was for everyone to be intelligent, broad-minded, tolerant and rational.

I guess I was fairly lucky in my family background.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have no sympathy for the hate-filled hypocrite.

B

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

I don't know very much about Haggard. I think when I mean I feel sympathy for him, I mean not for him exactly, but (if the accusations are accurate) sympathy for how he has twisted himself.

I don't know if you've read The Wild Swans (and I'm not asking you to say whether you have or haven't). But what I'm getting at is the utter devastation that William felt near the end of the book, when he thinks of the speech of excommunication, knowing that it should apply to him--and blows that candle out. I honestly think that is the most sadly bleak moment in the book. That sadness is what I feel sympathetic about--how a man who feels a religious calling and wants to be moral gets it so utterly wrong because of what he feels his religion forces him to believe about homosexuality, and feels himself to be damned accordingly.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Haggard could had been true to himself and lived outside the closet, but there was this matter of power. He's not a mere deacon or pastor, he's the leader of a 30 million member organization.

He chose to live a lie so he could wield power, power in the service of greed and lies.

It's difficult for me to have sympathy for that.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Very true.

No heroes here.

[arian1.livejournal.com]

You really wanna churn your bile?

Read this one:

http://tinyurl.com/y389m5

F Evangelicals. Seriously.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Urgh.

[rutemple.livejournal.com]

amen.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

From a political bent, I find that these stories always bounce in an unpleasant direction. Just when you think it's going to be "None of us are righteous before God," there will be folks who spin it into "See? Gay men are adulterers, customers of prostitutes, and drug users -- just the sorts of people who don't deserve the privilidges of our most sacred civil institution." And -- again, just me -- it seems a bit like gay-bashing to pummel a man with his sexual orientation just because your views are different than his. One might conclude that only heterosexuals are allowed to be hypocrites.

On a personal level, I can only assume that Rev. Haggard's life has been a challenging one of concealing parts of himself from his family and congregation, and I hope that the initial discomfort of the Light will eventually become an affirming comfort to him. I believe that, as with all people, he deserves comfort and support from both the gay and Christian communities, although I fear that both will desert him. I have faith that God will not, though.

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Remember who the customer really is. It's not evangelicals, or the GOP. It's the interests served by the GOP, and Haggard's job is to foster false consciousness in the evangelical community so that they vote Republican. There's a rougher term for that, coined by Stalin.

He had been betraying gays and evangelicals, but now he's messed with what Ned Beaty's character in Network called "the forces of nature."

Who Haggard needs to fear right now are the interests represented by the GOP. A GOP loss on Tuesday, while it won't completely confound them (after all, they have their Useful Idiots in the ranks of the Democrats), will make them "less rich." They will be vengeful, and unencumbered by notions of ethics and forgiveness.

When he realized he was going to be outed, Haggard's best choice should had been to cache a few gigabytes of information on strategy, notes on meetings with the White House, and GOP leadership, etc. and defect.

It's easier to forgive, and give shelter to a defector when you have useful intel on the opposition.

[redbird]

He has spent years working against the best interests of the queer community. He's still saying that he's not one of us, and that it would be wrong if he were. No sympathy here.

I would feel sympathy for, say, a closeted minister,outed by an ex-lover, who had focused his preaching on urging his congregation to follow the example of Jesus, and his political activity on something I am sympathetic to. But this man has gotten rich urging strangers to hate and oppress me. Why should I support him?

Christians can offer all the support they feel appropriate.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Mmm. I hear you. Perhaps a better word might be "pity" rather than "sympathy." You are right, I don't feel sympathetic to him at all.

But I do feel a sort of pity (as a Christian--a proud-to-be-progressive-and-pro-gay-civil-rights-Christian) for a man who apparently believes (if the allegations are true; it hasn't yet been proven that they are) that his faith demands that he hate his own true inner nature so much, and that his faith requires him to persecute others for their sexual orientation.

*sigh* That is not my sort of God. You have no idea how galling it is to have to continually defend my Christianity in the face of evidence of hateful hypocrisy of "Christians" like Haggard.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't know if I've clarified the position in my own mind. I'm definitely not thinking that the opinions that he has espoused deserve support; just him. The platitude that Christians tend to associate with this phenomenon is "love the sinner, hate the sin," which I think can and should be applied more broadly throughout society even though it sounds like Hallmark Channel crap.

It's just, I don't know, here's a guy who had to live in a deceitful manner towards the people closest to him, who was outed in a very public and relatively humiliating manner, and who will probably lose his job and many of his friends as a result of these public revelations. That's sucky. It's sucky when someone gets caught up in a DADT fiasco in the military and has to be discharged, it's sucky when a schoolteacher has to go through the wringer because of her personal life, and I wonder if it doesn't suck in very much the same way here. I think that there are large portions of the gay community who understand him and the situation in which he finds himself, and I pray that some of them find a heroic level of classiness to help him through his own darkness.

Also, as I said above, I want to live in a world where someone's sexual orientation is not cause for snide humor or a feeling that they're about to face social justice for their gayness. That, with all due respect, is what the Enemy does, and I will therefore strive to create the world that does something better. I'm not an angel or a Pollyanna here: I want to stand in front of James Dobson's fat face and say "Metaphorically stoning a gay man isn't right EVEN if it's your best friend and someone who has spent years harming the gay community himself. Every gay person deserves social dignity and civil rights no matter what his political views are." Again, this is a moral position that I borrow from Jesus, who said that the most sensible way to overcome your enemies is to be better than they are, and I think that he was on to something.

I agree with Peg that "pity" is a good start for how I feel. I feel that the place that he is a pitiful state. But, again I don't know, I think about Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela who dismantled apartheid and then, instead of dancing on Botha and DeKlerk's ashes, developed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to establish relationships based on a common history and a desire to understand each other. I think that is a wonderful model: using the power of Right to defeat Wrong, but then to use your power to purify the Wrong rather than just leaving it to fester in a dark corner to rise again later. I want to do that more often, not only because it is just and feels good, but because it is building the foundation of the next generation's ethics on love and understanding rather than on one week's tactical "gotcha" win.

Anyway, long and boring and probably not well written, but I didn't mean to imply that he deserved a free pass.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

The only thing I have to say is I've never heard of him. The news keeps saying he's "well-known". Well, it must be a regional well-known, and this is not the region.