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.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have no sympathy for the hate-filled hypocrite.

B

[arian1.livejournal.com]

You really wanna churn your bile?

Read this one:

http://tinyurl.com/y389m5

F Evangelicals. Seriously.

[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.

[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.