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.