It appears that Ted Haggard, the blowhard evangelist who (as previously reported here) figures prominently in such recent media presentations as Dawkins' The Root of All Evil? and Jesus Camp, has been accused of paying a gay man for gay sex. Haggard has temporarily stepped down in order to let an independent investigation (naturally in the interests of clearing his name) commence.
Haggard is considered one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Like many other Dominionists, he has the ear of the president. And he is, of course, ferociously opposed to gay marriage.
Some years ago a similar accusation was made against TBN president Paul Crouch, but that accusation turned out to have no merit and was in fact a pretty clear attempt at extortion. Here, though, the gay man who has come forth with all this, Mike Jones, does not appear to be looking for money and claims to have spoken out of conflicted feelings dealing with his ongoing private relationship with a two-faced homophobe who publically took a passionate anti-gay stance. We will, of course, have to see how this all pans out, and if Haggard suffers the same ignominious fall from grace as Swaggart and Bakker.
In any event, while we atheists will certainly get another schadenfreude moment out of this if it turns out to be true, to add to our present Hovind schadenfreude, it will not exactly come as a huge surprise to encounter another hypocritical evangelist who doesn't see fit to practice what he preaches, will it?
I saw this on the news this morning and found it highly interesting. I wonder if, as Jesus Camp noted, he's still meeting weekly with President Bush?
ReplyDeleteHmmmm. So potentially he's against gay marriage, but not gay sex? Maybe Jones was just one of those good-time boys that you just don't marry!?
He's innocent until proven guilty(not that he's "guilty" of anything but hypocrisy, even if he did anything), but still, it was too funny to see him this morning on the news--and for _this_!