SubscribeI’ve been watching the recent Ted Haggard debacle with some interest. I remember first hearing about him in a special that Richard Dawkins did for the BBC. Haggard struck me as a particularly pompous and arrogant guy, smiling a smarmy smile, looking like a rustic Tony Robbins. On camera, he was unctuous but pleasant; the special revealed, however, that when Dawkin’s crew was in the parking lot, packing up to leave, Haggard came riding up in his truck, threatening to call the police if they didn’t get off church property right away.
Like many media-smart evangelicals, he gave off an aura of innocence too good to be true, and now we apparently see that. Over the past week, having been accused of a three-year relationship with a male prostitute, and of using methamphetamines, he went from flat-out denial, to partial admissions, to more or less total admission, replete with penitant head-hanging (or shall I call it weeping and gnashing of teeth?).
The sick thing, of course, is that Haggard’s story is being wrought as a story wherein homosexuality plays the bad guy. If Haggard had been chasing skirt, we might compare him to Jimmy Swaggart and call it a day; it wouldn’t be the first time that a televangelist was sexually unfaithful. On the heels of the Mark Foley scandal, where once again the focus seemed to be especially on the gender of the page and not the impropriety of the action itself, this tells us something about the way that gay relationships are still seen as so remarkably transgressive. The news outlets flog it because it makes for more drama and better ratings; the Left flogs it in an effort to point out the hypocrisy of the cross-carrying Right. The Right just blames it on the Left1
What is disturbing about Haggard is that he is a man of weakness, no different from anyone else. I cannot even imagine what sort of self-hatred would possess a man to have a three-year homosexual relationship while getting up in front of his church every Sunday, as well as humping his message on-screen, and rhetorically blasting homosexuality as a dirty, filthy sin. Obviously, the outing of a “warrior for Christ” is a significant PR blow for the family values crowd—the White House, certainly, was quick to downplay Haggard’s involvement in Washington—but I’m more concerned with the treatment of the issue. What about the fact that Haggard was maritally unfaithful? If he’s suffered from “it for all of [his] adult life,”2, what can it say about the pressure to marry and produce offspring in spite of his obvious attraction to and desire for same-sex coitus? Is his entire marriage a cover for the sake of respectability?
My fear is that Haggard’s method of ‘getting help’ is going to come in the form of a lot of Bible-reading and self-flagellation. If he really does take meth, then he needs rehabilitation. If he truly loves his wife, he needs family counseling. Something tells me that all he’s going to do is talking to fellow pastors, who will quote him verses about Jesus’ love and not really fix anything. My suspicion that this is also what leads to such high divorce rates in conservative areas like Texas: marital problems are so often dealt with as religious issues that nobody bothers to seek professional secular help.
It’s easy for me to want to see Haggard and smirk at the black eye given to both he and his anti-gay movement by this whole thing. But part of me pities the poor bastard, too: there’s nothing harder than having to get out of a hole you dug for yourself, never expecting to fall in it.
- One very common response, when the Foley scandal broke, was to point out that Gerry Studds, a Democratic Congressman, had an unabashed affair with a male page in 1973. One chain e-mail that I saw claims that Studds received a standing ovation in Congress as a result of it, which is ridiculous: he was official censured by the House. But once again, it’s not the issue: Foley is a Republican in 2006, at a time when the official party lines gives no license to promiscuity and especially not to no damn queers.[↩]
- I’m not sure what ‘it’ is that’s so ‘dark and repulsive,’ but I’ll bet he’s talking about The Gay[↩]
S4R
/ Monday, November 6th, 2006The carelessness of leaving late-night-need-a-fix messages is typical behavior of an addict. How has this played out over the years in his life? There’s probably more to it than power corrupting. I imagine the drugs helped him cope with the self-hatred, which in turn caused him to easily/stupidly jeopardize the power and prestige he had garnered.