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]

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.