I meant to post on this earlier, so it’s a bit out of date, but it’s important to keep everyone abreast of the latest developments in the ongoing saga that is Ted Haggard, former pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs who got caught using meth. and having sex with a gay prostitute.
On February 4th, Ted Haggard sent an email to his friends, helpfully posted by the Denver Post here. Some informative bits:
“…As part of New Life's efforts to help me, they sent Gayle [his poor wife] and me to Phoenix for a three week psychological intensive [sic] that gave us three years worth of analysis and treatment…”
I want to know what that program is, that can give you three years of treatment in three weeks. Sort of like those Department of Defense language courses. But it continues:
“…Gayle and I have decided to move from Colorado Springs to go back to school. We love Colorado Springs so much, and will always regard the believer's at New Life Church as family, but we have to go in order to let the church determine its own course and for us to retrain. We haven't decided where we are moving but so far have been offered two places, one in Iowa and one in Missouri. We are both planning on getting our masters in Psychology so we can work together serving others the rest of our lives. Since we are taking our classes on-line, we can live anywhere that's affordable…”
Clearly they need to Get out of Dodge by Sundown. They are taking ‘on-line classes’ to get their Masters in Psychology, so they wouldn’t need to leave Colorado Springs for that.
Then on February 6th, it was announced that Ted Haggard is ‘completely heterosexual.’ Now having read into it I’ve discovered that the initial news reports, and more lighthearted reporting such as on the Daily Show, got it wrong. It was reported that Mr. Haggard was ‘cured’, when in fact the report from the overseer at the New Life Church doesn’t say that:
“…Ralph [the overseer] said three weeks of counseling at an undisclosed Arizona treatment center helped Haggard immensely and left Haggard sure of one thing. ‘He is completely heterosexual,’ Ralph said. ‘That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.’…"
In fact it looks like he wasn’t cured of homosexuality, because he was never gay in the first place.
So if I have sex with a man, with or without meth., apparently that doesn’t mean that I’m gay. Which is sort of cool in a way. Because even though I’ve never met a man I would want to have sex with, it’s nice to know that the option still exists whereby I can maintain my non-threatening and get-out-of-hell-free-card hetero status.
Stay tuned for a follow-up: On February 18th, the New Life Church will be getting another progress report from the oversight board.
