On Pastor Ted: The Collision of Sex, Religion and Deception

To review: Pastor Ted Haggard of the 14,000 member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO was accused of having a three year sexual tryst with a Denver-based male prostitute, Mike Jones. One year into the relationship Haggard started buying crystal methamphetamine and snorting it to enhance these secret liasions. Haggard, a married man and the father of five kids, has since stepped down as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was dismissed from the church as its active pastor.

Upon hearing the news, my inner partisan Democrat laughed maniacally at the hypocrisy of it all. As many readers know, Haggard had a close relationship with Bush and was responsible for organizing support for all those traditional marriage ammendments on sundry state ballots, including eight more states whose citizens will decide on Tuesday. In some ways, this issue is yet another boon in 2006 for progressives and Democrats. However, a spiritual advisor to President Clinton said that Haggard does enormous damage to the gay and lesbian community as well ... painting a picture that gay men, especially, are all meth-fused prostitutes waiting to home-wreck the marriages of respectable heterosexual men of the cloth.

Would people jump to such conclusions?

Or do people understand that the culprit is certainly not the GLBT community, but this idea of the suffocating closet? A dark secret life that betrays the impossible moral standards.

Do church-people realize that GLBT people really have the capacity for boring lives as well? It's true we tend to travel and go out dancing more because of extra income and fewer kids, but we also have to do middle-American things like washing the laundry and cleaning the bathroom. For instance, a typical night for me is ordering pizza and watching Golden Girls reruns with my boyfriend, my cat and my dog. And I love my quiet life.

I am, however, not opposed to prostitution (not necessarily for me, but for society). I see prostitution as a business transaction between two consenting adults. Haggard looking for "meth" is certainly a stupid idea, but we can't blame him for wanting to take risks.

There was part of me that did hurt when I saw his two kids in the backseat of the car in an off-the-cuff interview. In that video clip he alleged to having bought "meth" once, but decided instead to throw it away. Anyone could tell that the man was lying, but still it was the only moment where I felt a little sorry for him ... just a little.

David Kuo, who was #2 in charge of Bush's faith-based initiatives office, recently wrote a scathing book about faith-based power and political hypocrisy, called "Tempting Faith." He was recently on NPR, asking that evangelicals take a "fast from politics."

An even better proposition is if evangelicals started voting Democrat. If anything, they could vote to restore accountability and honesty in government ... and support the poor by helping to boost the minimum wage in this country. It could be a vote to end American bloodshed in Iraq, and a step towards protecting the natural resources of planet Earth.