Gay Sex is OK, just NOT Gay Marriage!
That’s the sentiment of Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the 30 million member National Association of Evangelicals. An outspoken opponent of gay marriage, Rev. Haggard has given up his post while a church panel investigates allegations he paid a man for sex for the last three years. Rev. Haggard, 50, is a married father of five. He also stepped aside as head of his 14,000 member New Life Church.
The acting pastor at New Life, Ross Parsley, told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs that Haggard admitted that some of the accusations were true. “I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all the material that has been discussed but there is an admission of some guilt,” Parsley told the station.
The allegations come as voters in Colorado and seven other states get ready to decide Tuesday on amendments banning gay marriage. The accusations were made by Mike Jones, 49, of Denver, who said he decided to go public because of the nasty political fight over the amendments. “I just want people to step back and take a look and say, ‘Look, we’re all sinners, we all have faults, but if two people want to get married, just let them, and let them have a happy life,'” said Jones, who added that he isn’t working for any political group.
Jones, who is gay, said he became upset when he discovered Rev. Haggard and the New Life Church had publically opposed same-sex marriage. “It made me angry that here’s someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex,” he said.
Jones claimed Rev. Haggard paid him to have sex nearly every month over three years. He said he had advertised himself as an escort on the internet and was contacted by a man who called himself Art, who snorted methamphetamine before they had sex to heighten his experience. Jones said he later saw his sex partner identified as Rev. Haggard on television, and that the two last had sex in August. He said he has voice mail messages from Haggard, as well as an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash.
“Hi Mike, this is Art,” one call began, according to the station. “Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply.” A second message, left a few hours later began: “Hi Mike, this is Art. I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I’ll get it sometime next week or the week after or whatever.”
Closeted homosexuals or bisexuals like the Rev. Haggard always have it worked out in their head–their erotic life is so compartmentalized from their regular existence it’s like two different people walking around in the same body. But when the sexual fantasies move from imagination into reality–fucking, sucking, licking, cuming–it’s a tad harder to keep both worlds separated. Now, somebody besides you knows…
Part of me gloats at this situation–a guy who’s making political hay gets caught with a dick in his mouth; but mostly I feel sorry for him. It is another example of a devout Christian trying to deal with being gay. Gays are not welcome in New Life and many other churches, so in order to remain as a respected member of the community a secret life is necessary. But the secret life is an interior one as well. The two people inside of one body are separate, are strangers, and hate one another.
This warped disconnect of two halves, of twin selves, is something most religious Christians–Catholic or Protestant–seem to go through. The despair finally leads us out of the closet, or the trapped desire and internalized homophobia becomes hate, envy, and frustration against the object of desire–gay sex.
Welcome, Rev. Haggard, to life anew. To pain and pleasure you never thought possible.
