Haggard.... Heal Thyself

So, are we to have a tearful Jimmy Swaggart "I have sinned" moment from another influential Baton Rouge-bred evangelical pastor?.... "Church Leader Resigns After Gay Sex Claim" .... and there is more. Drug use, methamphetamine to be exact.

The pastor is Ted Haggard, the Colorado Springs megachurch, president of National Association of Evangelicals, Bush White House insider, that Ted Haggard.

Fed up with Haggard's outspoken opposition to same-sex marriage, paid gay escort Mike Jones revealed that he had a three-year sexual relationship with Haggard and witnessed the pastor using meth, and has voice-mail and other proof of the relationship.

After initial denials, an associate pastor at Haggard's New Life church now relates that Haggard has admitted to some of the charges.

Hypocrisy is nothing new in the sanctimonious evangelical world, but Haggard may have taken it to a jaw-dropping realm.

To quote Haggard, "If a person has homosexual tendencies... they need to practice abstinence."

A fawning Harpers article written in May of 2005, says of Haggard, "Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil's plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church..." said the spider to the fly.

Haggard preached about his perceived Underworld.... "an underworld of people. The tattoo crowd, the people into drugs, the people into sex. You find 'em.... in the Underworld." He wanted to save the people in the Underworld.... as it turns out, his world.

Haggard told Harpers, "I want my finances in order, my kids trained, and my wife to love life.... I don't want surprises, scandals, or secrets.... I want stability."

Surprises? Like the one your wife and the mother of your five children just got that undoubtedly sent her scurrying to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases? Those kinds of surprises?

Haggard is the evangelical political lynch-pin and staunch ally of the Bush administration. So... in these crucial few days before the elections the GOP religious conservatives are desperately trying to downplay the scandal. Saying it doesn't reverberate nationally, it's merely a Colorado Springs story...

Yet, according to Harpers, "Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday.... presides over the NAE, whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation's most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations," not to mention the 14,000 some membership of his New Life church.

Because of Haggard's influence, some call Colorado Springs the "evangelical Vatican." Just imagine the religious bombshell if it was discovered that the Pope was a practicing gay meth user. No, this isn't just an insignificant local matter, this rocks worlds.

"No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted.... what Pastor Ted has built in Colorado Springs is not just a battalion of spiritual warriors but a factory for ideas to arm them."

Among the ideas being manufactured in Haggard's factory is strident gay-bashing, to enshrine in our Constitution, and state Constitutions, an amendment that in effect denies equal rights to gays in their life choices. A moralizing amendment, drafted by moralizing "Haggards."

What better argument for separation of church and state!

NOVEMBER 7..... VOTE!