The Funniest Thing that's happened all year . . .

It's got to be tough to live a lie. Spending any brief moment of inactivity sweating over indiscretions, bartering with the almighty to keep your hideous secret to yourself. In every public gesture knowing full well that your artifice is a sham.


Ted Haggard, champion of Evangelism, pariah of born-agains, Creationists, political activist and ally of the pious and moral (I can't say that with a straight face) president, is a gay man who has struggled with his sexual identity and impulses for all of his adult life. He also may have a drug problem. I know gay people and I know drug addicts; the former having no adjective that fits them all and the latter being a pitiable sort. A reasonable person, especially one who's life is devoted to forgiveness, should see nothing wrong with homosexuality and at worst extend a helping hand to the drug addict. Haggard, on the other hand, has been stamping his brand of moral rectitude all over our culture with a self-hatred that he could seemingly only extinguish be distributing amongst others like him. While not the most hard-line homophobe in charge of a church, he held office with the National Association of Evangelicals (a body representing the tilted ideology that favors legislation like the marriage amendment), he lobbied against gay rights, he belittled Richard Dawkins for arrogance. Think of that, a hypocritical, irrational preacher with political influence and a history of secret homosexual rendezvous with prostitutes telling a man of science that he is arrogant.
As a human being, Haggard deserves our sympathies during this difficult time. However, as an idea (and a man who heads a mega-church and presided over an organization representing millions is more an idea than a man) he needs to be exposed and ridiculed. Not for being a gay man and not for being a drug addict. But for being an asshole who hates himself so much that he won't be satisfied until you hate yourself. For dragging our culture further into confusion and denial. For working in direct opposition to the forces that could have liberated him from his life of fear.

Moreso than the event itself, I'm piqued by what this all means for religion. Obviously it says little about the truth or implausibility of religion; but what does it say about our culture of religion. What are we, rational thinkers and people trying to do our best, to make of posturing, self-important "prophets" when it is learned that they are in fact their own worst enemy?

My impression of these events reinforces what I already thought. The puritanical religious tendency (that is, the impulse to push one's morality onto others) is bred in fear. Fear of oneself and the misplaced reaction toward the masses. What's most perplexing and troubling about these revelations, these particular ones and those uncovered in the past, is that Ted Haggard is still sticking to his guns. Homosexuality is still "wrong" to him, and he refers to the mess as a deep, dark sin. I disagree. The "sin" is that we live in a society, perpetuated by cowards like Ted Haggard, in which we have to hate ourselves for being ourselves.