Hypocrite of the worst kind

[kurth]

Another GOP Sex Scandal

The Nation -- It's becoming to difficult to keep track of all the Republican sex scandals these days. The latest "moral values" offender is Reverend Ted Haggard, head of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Haggard resigned yesterday as president of the National Association of Evangelicals amid allegations that he paid for gay sex during a three-year tryst with a male escort and used drugs such as methamphetamines. According to the acting pastor of New Life, Haggard admitted that "some of the accusations against him are true." Today, Haggard told reporters that he bought meth, though never used it, and received a massage from the accuser.

This is not just any religious leader we are talking about. "No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted," Jeff Sharlet of Harper's reported in a profile of Haggard last year. He talks to President Bush or his advisors every Monday. Haggard, like his fellow Christian soldier James Dobson, also happens to be a leading opponent of gay marriage and an ardent critic of an amendment on the Colorado ballot November 7 that would give same-sex couples equal rights under the law and a supporter of another amendment that would prohibit gay marriage in the state. He's called gay marriage a "sin" and "devastating for the children of our nation."

It's a routine that's won Haggard praise since as far back as 1993. "During services at the New Life church," the New York Times reported back then, "Pastor Ted Haggard warns against the evils of homosexuality and adultery. His followers respond with exuberant clapping and shouts of 'Amen!' and 'That's right!'" In 2004, he led the push with Dobson and other religious right leaders for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. Haggard's accuser, male escort Mike Jones, decided to finally speak up because "I felt like I had to take a stand, and I cannot sit back anymore and hear to me is an anti-gay message."

Conservatives are worried that the allegations may further depress "values voters" already angry about the Mark Foley revelations. "If the story is true, Ted's a hypocrite of the worst kind," Sharlet writes on his blog. "Then again, he's also another victim of the very closet over which he publicly stands guard."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20061103/cm_thenation/15136206

[tblue]

1. I think of all the LGBT young kids who've been traumatized, victimized, made to hate themselves

by this modern day Elmer Gantry, and I have a hard time feeling sorry for this guy.

[Duncan Grant]

4. Yours is the best comment I've seen on this hypocrisy.

My feelings exactly. The things they do in the name of Christ -- horrendous.

[tblue]

5. That's the part that makes me mad. I don't care what drugs this freak took or

what he did with that prostitute. I'm enraged for the people he has hurt, how many we'll never know, people driven to suicide because of his active, public cursing and condemning people's most private lives. That's why I am so damned proud to be a Democrat, because we don't pull that crap, NONE of us. And, you notice, we don't have this kind of hypocrisy about homosexuality. My parents always taught me that all people are equal and to treat everyone the same. What in the world do right-wing extremists teach their kids?

[orpupilofnature57]

2. thats why a porno star will enter the pearly gates ,before a congressman.

[IHaveADream]

3. Hypocrazy

[Karenina]

6. That graphic should be pasted

ALL OVER the surrounding area of his church!!! :evilgrin: