In Defense Of Ted Haggard
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Yes, you read that right. I am going to, in a way, defend Ted Haggard. Sort of. He is still culpable for all of the distress he caused himself, his family, his congregation, and everyone else. But there may be more at work here. What I’d really like to do is try to answer a few simple questions. Whenever a popular anti-gay activist is exposed as obviously gay a few questions come up: How can he be gay and married? Isn’t homosexuality a choice? Why are so many people turning gay these days? Let me take a crack at it.
First things first. A man who is attracted to, or has sex with, men is a gay man. Or at least a bisexual. There really isn’t anything else to it. A bisexual can very easily be married to a member of the opposite sex – for a strictly gay man it is harder. But if you live in a community that believes that the gay is the work of Satan, you are going to have to adapt or leave. For men like Haggard, perhaps leaving isn’t an option. How hard is it to marry someone you don’t love? Ask most married people. But this is an easy question, I think. The harder question is next. Why are men like this convinced homosexuality is a choice if they (apparently) didn’t choose it?
I lied, this is dead simple. They’re gay. Sure, you knew this already but they didn’t! They grew up in a culture that believes that homosexuality is a desire sent to them by Satan. What’s more, they think it happens to everyone! Straight men, let me ask you a question. Do you wrestle with homosexual desires? Of course not, you’re not gay. This is the disconnect everyone forgets about. Most men don’t wrestle with homosexuality because they aren’t gay. This is the simple answer no one ever thinks of. Anti-gay leaders think homosexuality is a choice everyone needs to make because they are gay. And not just living in the closet, but a bathroom stall like Larry Craig.
But why are there so many of them? Well, this is another easy answer. Gay people are everywhere. But you thought it was only 10%? Remember something important: to determine the number of gays and bisexuals, they must self report. Is a guy like Ted Haggard going to self identify? Of course not. But he’s still gay. Or bi. There aren’t any more gay people now. We have always been here. But we’re not afraid to say so anymore. At least not those of us who aren’t living under the heel of some absurd fairy tale.
To sum up, if you are anti-gay and struggling with homosexuality, you aren’t going through something everyone goes through. You’re gay. I used the masculine pronoun here both because it’s mostly men who get caught and because it saves me on typing. But switch the pronouns and change gay to lesbian and it’s still true. Ted Haggard is still at fault, but so is the absurd religion that allows people to bully and intimidate others into becoming complete assholes. If you’re gay, it isn’t Satan’s fault or the fault of anyone else. You’re just gay and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
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Well put Brian. The same realization hit me only a few years back. I had heard preachers talk about men wrestling with the temptation of homosexuality and all I could ever think was “what temptation???” The argument just seemed so odd, but I just chalked it up as if the preacher was arguing that certain people are burdened with this while other aren’t. Of course, that wasn’t what they were saying.
I marvel at how others can so easily avoid sweets, but that’s because I have an incredibly annoying sweet tooth that causes me to crave unhealthy stuff. It could just be that many other people aren’t so tempted & that’s why it’s so easy for them to take a pass on dessert. Still, I instinctively see it as if they have stronger willpower than me. The only difference is that I can rationally understand that not everyone feels the same temptations I feel. These preachers don’t seem to make that connection.
Yeah, I’ve long said this. To put a finer point on it, I think that many anti-gay activists who are gay themselves believe that homosexuals are horrible perverted people because they themselves are.
They hate themselves, they know that they are themselves gay, they believe that being gay is wrong, and then because they believe that being gay is wrong they live a closeted lifestyle of denial, which in and of itself creates all kinds of conflicts and perversions, which they then attribute to all homosexuals.
So, for example, some gay man who is a fundamentalist Christian may marry a woman, try to be a good father, try not to “be gay”, and in the process they get depressed, have thoughts of suicide, may make attempts at molesting boys since they are easy targets or at least have thoughts about it, etc. all of which is brought about not from “being gay”, but from being closeted.
And from their experience they believe that this is what being gay is like, and its bad, so they come out against it, and when you hear them saying all these bad things about the character of gay people, they are really talking about themselves and projected themselves onto all gay people.
And not only that, but taking the “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop” mentality they occupy their time with anti-gay activism as a means of trying to “self-medicate” their own gay denial. In other words, denying their own homosexuality is so painful that they anti-gay activism is a useful distraction that they use to try and keep themselves away from homosexuality. Maybe they feel that their anti-gay activities will either cure themselves or at least prevent them from acting on their desires by occupying their time and reminding themselves how bad those desires are.
It is quite sad really. It is also something the gay community will hopefully get better at dealing with, knowing that, in fact, some of the strongest enemies of gay rights are themselves closeted gay people. It’s a difficult situation. Imagine if the biggest opponents of the Civil Rights movement were blacks. There is no such thing as a closeted black though, so that’s why that didn’t happen.
When you’re a fundamentalist, you exist in a closed ecosystem. Many gay Christians have no other opinions coming in at all. I really feel bad for all of them. Even Ted Haggard, though less so. He obviously knows better, he even hired a prostitute.
@Meettheskeptics Good point. I have no sweet tooth. If fact, I generally dislike chocolate and have little interest in sugar. It isn’t willpower, it’s lack of interest.