Today's Post from the Hippolytic

The Haggard Case

Well here's today's biggest headline: evangelical leader Ted Haggard is accused of having paid a gay prostitute for sexual service over the course of three years. He also admits to purchase of methamphetamines from a gay escort service in Colorado. In some sense, it seems like old news: big political or religious leader accused of sex scandal, massive cover-up ensues, rocks thrown everywhere, and not much changes (unless the Democratic president is impeached). Perhaps things won't happen again this way--it seems to me the evangelical machine isn't as secretive and hierarchical as the Catholic Church, although it is as rich and cut-throat as mainstream political parties. Regardless, I am dying to see how it will react. Whatever it does, it's in big trouble. It could condemn Haggard with equal force as it condemned Clinton or the Massachusetts priests of the Catholic Church's sex-scandal (remember how Santorum attributed this scandal to Boston's culture of "academic, political, and cultural liberalism"? It seems unlikely to me that it will do so, since it refused to come out so hard in the same way on Foley, de-emphasizing what he actually did and instead focusing on how the Democrats were supposedly using the issue for political purposes. The wider evangelical populace saw the scandal more as a result of Foley's own personal failings, rather than as a greater problem of the Republican party itself (i.e. its refusal to disclose telling information on one of its members.) While these aforementioned sex-scandals differ greatly from the Haggard case (Haggard's doesn't involve rape or pedolphilia) it seems we can learn some lessons from the Right's reaction to these former cases. It seems likely to me that the evangelical machine will offer some kind of limited defense of Haggard--if he actually admits his participation in such activity--while ultimately linking it all, à la Santorum, to some kind of "massive liberal conspiracy" (it's not me that does that Stan!).

But could this be a turning point of sorts? That is, could the evangelical community's realization that one of their leaders has *gasp* homosexual interests turn them on to the idea that perhaps homosexuality is much more human than they had previously imagined? Somehow I doubt it, and, in fact, it could swing the other way: Haggard's apparent use of drugs and prostitution may cement even more deeply the widely held belief in the connection of homosexuality and moral degeneracy. But perhaps the evangelical community will finally see an issue for what it is: a hypocrite in high power who, while fighting against homosexuality as hard as he could, turned out to have homosexual longings himself. Failing to find outlet for these longings in an open, healthy way, he turned to prostitution and methamphetamines. At the very least, it may force some of those who rage so hard against the progress of the gay community in this country to look inside and ask themselves whether this really is the right cause to be fighting for.