pegkerr | This is an ugly story

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

This is an ugly story

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

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

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