Haggard

I can't help but feel sad for Ted Haggard, the politically powerful Evangelical minister who (allegedly, my daughter reminds me) bought methamphetamine and other services from a gay prostitute.

In a bizzare twist of irony, the anti-gay preachin' Pastor Haggard was "outted" by a homopportunist who admitted that he wanted to sway the election. The punchline, of course, is that gays are now being used by both the Republicans and other gays to influence Republican voters!

The part that makes me sad is this. Here's a guy, likely gay, probably in denial, who turned his life into a lie in order to be accepted by his God, his friends, his co-workers, his political party, and society in general. What does society gain by this? Does a desperate man pretending to be something else make a better citizen? A better pastor? Does it honor the institution of marriage for a man who is not straight to pretend he is, thereby cheating his marital partner out of any opportunity for a true marital bond?

Let's assume (as I do) that most gays are gay because they were born that way -- that some group of cells deep inside the lizardy part of their brains gives them the identity and awareness of being gay. Let's also assume that it's the same sort of cell group that gives me the identity of a hetero. Speaking from experience, I do not recall making a decision to be straight. It wasn't like I had to make a decision between Tammy and Tommy in the 7th grade. In fact, I was pretty mindlessly boy crazy from the day I hit kindergarten.

Fortunately I've never had to separate my sexual drive from my romantic impulses.. falling in love, being sexually intimate, wanting to bind myself to someone for life have all been as natural to me as breathing. I can't imagine what it would be like to have to separate those things or to have any of them pronounced off-limits to me by majority rule. Knowing me, I'd probably become radicalized but I can see where other people would try to adapt, try to pass themselves off as what society wants them to be. I just don't see who that really benefits and I refuse to participate in it.

P.S. Let's not devolve this into some kind of "slippery slope" conversation where today it's man-man love and tomorrow it's man-dog love. There are plenty of blogs that would be more than happy to indulge that ridiculous discussion but this isn't one of them.