To be honest, I am more concerned with this wife than him. The look on her face when this hit the news was such a mixture of horror, sudden realization of the truth, bitterness and panic, it made me physically ill.
This is exactly what all those hateful people are advocating, when they insist that homosexuals ‘do have the right to marry, just someone of the opposite sex’. How anyone would wish such a fate on an innocent genuinely heterosexual woman (or man, tho’ most victims are women, power in this culture lying as it does) is beyond me.
Ted Haggard is a sad example of what happens when Christian fundamentalists force people to ‘be’ a sexuality they are not.
Frankly, insurance salesman is a large step up from fundamentalist, mega-church pastor. He’s taken his first step. Next, if he continues to progress, he can become a used car salesman.

i would hope that the family is helping him to make decisions, since as the solo entity he had his lapses. i feel for him and his family being written off by the tribe he gave so much to be a part of.

I cannot imagine being his wife and reading this: “Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard says in a new documentary that he still struggles with his sexuality yet is committed to his marriage for the sake of his children.”
That’s gotta make her feel real loved.

Haggard no doubt was paid for his participation in the documentary — and is hoping his renewed “celebrity” will help him get other open doors to speak (speaking = $$). The best thing for him might be to stay out of the spotlight and heal, but that doesn’t pay the bills. The allure of the easy money in the spotlight would be too much for many of us to say No to, I suspect. He and his family have my prayers and my sympathy.

Panthera — be careful. Your thoughts are solid, then you dip low with your shot at the “fundamentalist, mega-church pastors.” Your words play into the same dilemma many face (ie. Ted Haggard) who lump everyone into a particular group into a particular category. All fundamentalist are not nuts and all pastors of churches that happen to be large are not anti-gay. That is the kind of dialogue that stops the dialogue. Caution!

Noted, Lee – my family lives just down the road from Colorado Springs. I may, perhaps, be forgiven a touch of sourness on mega-church pastors.
Speaking of which, my dear brother waited until after Christmas was set for his house to announce that my partner and I would not be welcome. True Christians, only.
My parents are feeling about as low as, well, you can just imagine…knowing this may be their last Christmas with the family, and now it must be split.
That, Lee, is the type of “Christians” who I must deal with – ones who can not even set aside their hatred for one single, solitary afternoon to make their own parents happy. Whoops! Forgot…all that talk about honoring one’s parents is soooo OT and stuff that long-haired Jewish guy, what’s his name, well never mind, he was only the Son of God would find important.
Can you point out any mega-churches which do not preach hatred towards me as a homosexual? I am not aware of any, tho’, as I mentioned above, my acquaintance with this American phenomenon is limited to Colorado.

The best treatment I’ve seen of the whole subject was on internet monk’s blog. http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/advent-with-ted-the-loser

Here are my thoughts at my blog:
http://www.existentialpunk.com/existential_punk/2008/12/haggard-still-struggles-with-sexuality.html
i must admit i laughed when i first heard about Haggard’s fall from grace. i thought, ‘Ha, another hypocritical Religious Right Christian messes up!’ i was so hypocritical myself since i hid for many years within my own Christian fundamentalism, feeling powerless to break out to be free and true to myself. i should never laugh at someone else’s misfortune or downfall. Instead i should pray. First, i ask for forgiveness for my arrogance and pride. Second, i will try to never scoff at someone else’s misfortune. Who am i anyways? i am a human being who is fallible and fuck up all the time. Ted Haggard, you are NOT a loser in the eyes of G-D!
My prayers and thoughts are with Ted and his family. May G-D’s grace fill them all.

Panthera,
I understand Lee’s point and I think it important if we are ever to get to the point where family members can be charitable without compromising their values if just for a day. But I understand your complete frustration with the stark disconnect between how many Christians practice their moral values (the degree to which they are biblical being under dispute) and the voluminous emphasis on reconciliation and love found in the bible. I wish I knew of a mega-church that does not preach hatred towards you as a homosexual. In my experience there are none. I guess that’s part of why I go to a UCC church despite that I am sort of out of place in their theological conversations given that I have a stronger interest in dialogue with the entire Christian tradition and my comfort with the paradoxes of faith and creeds. At least I have found that I cannot believe/disbelieve myself out of such a church and I personally need a church that is truly welcoming to the LGBT community.
I hope someone might be able to point out instances of public goodness on behalf of mega-churches. Just loving kindness without the incessant need to remind everyone of their moral stance on homosexuality and protect their righteous image or dogmatic purity. Moreover, the courage to be loving without conditions even if those they love may act in ways contrary to what they believe to be the will of God. I have not found many (if anyone) who can publicly walk this line. I don’t even know if it is possible.

panthera, are you saying that being an active practicing homosexual is not committing sin? Repent dude, living a homosexual lifestyle and calling Jesus your Lord and Saviour can not co-exist. Does that make me a hater? No more than calling porn viewing a sin, or any other moral issues; I don’t hate the sinner, but I’m also not willing to call sin anything other than sin. I’ll be praying for you man.

@My Name above i think Panthera is a woman. When you say, ‘Repent dude, living a homosexual lifestyle and calling Jesus your Lord and Saviour can not co-exist.’ is a judgment on your part and is YOUR opinion, so here’s how you ought to say things like this in the future that would be more helpful and less antagonistic: “My opinion on how I interpret scripture is that homosexuality is a sin.”
i do not believe you can judge someone’s salvation as that, i believe, is between each individual person and G-D! We all sin and often take time to recognize it and to repent. So, by your logic, we all fall into and out of salvation, including yourself!
i personally do not interpret the scripture as condemning homosexuality as sin. i am a queer woman who loves and follows Christ to best of my fragile ability. Could i be wrong, sure. But i do not see you considering your views could be wrong. All i see is you are certain in your beliefs. Hmmm, where is your humility?
Warm regards,
Existential Punk

Hey My name, no name, anonymous, whoever you are. If anyone needs repenting of sin, it’s YOU! Repent of your ignorance about what science has told us about sexual orientation! Repent of your ignorance of contemporary scriptural scholarship! Repent of your fear of those different from yourself in their sexual orientation! Repent of your lovelessness! Repent of your being stuck in your prejudice and discrimination! I and others are praying for you, man. We hate your sin but we do love you and call you to repent of it.
What is sad about Ted Haggard is that he has not been able to come to terms with his inate sexual orientation and continues to suffer in self-loathing and hatred. Haggard ought to get in touch with and counsel with the Rev. Dr. Mel White who for much of his life was in the closet as he ministered in the evangelical church with his writing and film production. He also ghost wrote books for Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham. You can read about his life in and his coming out of his closet in his autobiography, “Stranger at the Gates: To Be Christian and Gay in America.” Another recent book of his is “Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right.”
Mel also, with his spouse and partner Gary Nixon, began the interfaith organization SOULFORCE that practices and encourages non-violent civil-disobedience to work for justice and equality of GLBT people in the church and society. Learn more about SOULFORCE and the resources they have to support GLBT people in their spiritual life and in their fight against homophobia, prejudice and bigotry at http://www.soulforce.org.
A great new pro-gay marriage song by Christian gay singer Ray Boltz, “Don’t Tell Me Who to Love.” It is now great music video produced by http://www.Soulforce.org Watch and listen to it @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBQyJTXiOYs

Your interpretation is wrong, but then again, if you torture Scripture hard enough it will say anything that you want it to. It may be of your opinion that you won’t get injured if you fall off of a bridge onto concrete but I personally am not willing to test your opinion. Scripture is crystal clear that homosexuality is a sin … that’s not judgment, that’s fact. BTW, my humility sits at the foot of the cross, knowing that it was MY sin that killed a sinless Christ, My sin that I repent for every day …

@My name above Why are you so afraid to post your name? If you are going to come and post comments, then be brave and tell us who you are rather than hide.
i found you to be harsh and arrogant and not very humble when you said, “Your interpretation is wrong, but then again, if you torture Scripture hard enough it will say anything that you want it to.” How do you know YOUR interpretation is the correct one? We cannot read all of scripture at face value and interpret it all literally. Cultural and historical contexts must be considered.
It is simply YOUR interpretation that, “Scripture is crystal clear that homosexuality is a sin … that’s not judgment, that’s fact.” It must be nice and comforting for you to have ALL your beliefs nailed down so perfectly and the entire Bible figured out. i find not having it all figured out is a much more interesting way to live my life and feel richer for it.
i see you did not respond to my comment above so i will copy it here and maybe you will respond in some automatic, cliched way as have with everything on this thread so far:
i said, “i do not believe you can judge someone’s salvation as that, i believe, is between each individual person and G-D! We all sin and often take time to recognize it and to repent. So, by your logic, we all fall into and out of salvation, including yourself!”
We can agree to disagree but i am not going to be so arrogant and tell people they are wrong and my interpretations are all the correct ones. We are all on a journey and come to our own conclusions at different times.
All the best, whoever you are!
EP

I wonder just how strong one’s faith is, when the Bible needs must be inerrant and one’s love of God is proved through the depth of one’s hatred for those whom one fancies do not follow God’s will.
Living as I do in Europe and being confronted, as I am, with the hateful fundamentalist Christians who have completely destroyed all unity in my American family, I have had it up to here with the conservative, fundamentalist, literalistic, followers-of-ancient-traditions and however else they hateful people choose to name themselves.
The cherry-picking of the Bible, the careful selection of only those natural sciences which are pleasing, the thinly veiled contempt of women, so much hypocrisy and willfulness is not easy to find in any other group. Since we, as Christians, all believe that we shall someday stand before our maker, I do wonder just what exactly their excuse will be for all the people upon whom they passed judgment, all the families they tore apart, all those who might have found peace in Christ but whom they drove away.
I don’t think there can be any resolution or getting along. All we can do is see to it that never again are these hateful people permitted to intervene in the US government as they have over the last eight years. The tyranny of these people against minorities such as us homosexuals is an offense to God.

Sigh.
There is one point on which we are all in agreement. This software is absolutely horrible.
Once again, me current text was eaten and a text which I had posted a few days back – a response to an entirely different thread – was substituted (reconstituted?).
Sigh.
No time now to rewrite my posting, so just a few quick notes.
1) I appreciate any prayers for my well being.
2) Please don’t let the Latin confuse you, I am a man. Not that gender is relevant to our discussions…and it is both sad and very telling that many people here discriminate against women.
3) I have had it up to here with ‘homosexual lifestyle’. Do I, living in a monogamous, committed relationship with another man (outside of the US we are married partners, here we are not even human) go around judging heterosexual marriages on the basis of Britanny Speers and her two-day shack-ups, despite the fact that they are legally recognized as marriage? No, I do not. Stop it! It is bearing false witness!
4) The Bible says nothing about homosexuality. Jesus, did, however, have some very pointed comments on the impossibility of divorce. I don’t see you fundamentalist, literalistic, conservative, followers-of-ancient-traditions rejecting divorced and re-married heterosexual people from your churches…although their ‘sin’ was even highlighted by Jesus. Oh, right – he was just a long-haired Jewish rabbi and the Son of God, our Savior. Nobody at all, compared to Paul.
5) It is an affront to God to usurp His decision as to who is saved or not. How dare you decide for God the status of my soul!
6) Every time we, as Christians, place ourselves against the truths revealed to us be science, ie.: Flat earth, geocentric view of the universe, age of the earth, ‘Creationism’ versus Natural Selection and Evolution, inferiority of women and blacks to white men, et cetra, et al., we not only disparage God’s creation, we also drive sensible people away from God’s message. The same is true of this nonsense about homosexuality being a sin. Medicine has long since demonstrated, science presented clear evidence that we are neither sick, nor perverted, nor following a ‘choice’ nor yet pedophile, incestuous or otherwise contra naturae. Even this blanket rejection of homosexuality among high order mammals has been disproved. Bearing false witness is, again, a sin.
Well, let’s see what happens this time.
Oh, right – nearly forgot. It would be enormously helpful to chose and maintain a screen name. “Your Name” is not an appropriate identifier. These threads are cheapened by such abuse.

“Scripture is crystal clear that homosexuality is a sin … that’s not judgment, that’s fact.”
Scripture is crystal clear that not only is slavery condonable, there is a right set of rules to treat your slaves with, that God himself has given us in the bible. For instance, beating your slave so harshly that he dies immediately is almost the same as murder, but if he dies a few days later, you’re clear. That’s not judgement, that’s a fact.
Scripture is crystal clear that stars are not giant spheres of mostly hydrogen and helium, fusing atoms in their cores. They are little lights up in the sky that on the judgement day, will fall down to earth. Catch a falling star, and put it in your pocket. And that’s not misquoting scripture, there’s no mistaking the direct and forthright tone of this prophecy.
Scripture is crystal clear, in fact, that incest is not (always) wrong, because if it all started with just Adam and Eve…
See what stupidity you get when you treat the bible as some kind of Divine legal document, with the same religious legalism that actually put Jesus on the cross? As if God could fit in a book! You pretend to worship God, but actually use a legalistic interpretation of the bible to paint yourself as God. “Your interpretation is wrong”

It should have been obvious…he used the word “Fabulous” three times in Jesus Camp.

I hear all that most of you are saying about judging people and chosing which Scriptures best fits each situation. People who love and adhere to the word of God did not write it. We all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God. We must also remember that some things are not just falling short they are choices. The Bible clearly says in 11 Peter 1:20 that the Scripture is of no private interpretation. Also read Hebrews 1-6. And remember that God loves the sinner for he created us all but does he hate, I didn’t write it but men endowed by the Holy Ghost did. I am a sinner and in need of a savior……
Amen!!!!!!!!!

your name was not intentional i just had to start over. Didn’t mean to offend by that