Ted Haggard Cured Of Homosexuality - Gets Payoff From Church To Go Away

So what was touted as taking maybe several years has ended up being a 3 week crash course on heterosexuality. Seems Ted Haggard, recently fallen evangelical pastor of the New Lief Church in Colorado Springs has been given a new life. After only 3 weeks he has been pronounced completely heterosexual.

The subtext behind this is that he has reached a settlement with the church. They paid him an undisclosed amount of money and he agrees to move out of the state. Sounds a lot like the Catholic Church's dealing with their pedophile priests. Move them out so they become someone else's problem.

First of all, I don't buy this cure for a minute. Homosexuality isn't a disease so there is no cure. Also, who is to say that Ted Haggard isn't just bisexual? Why does he have to come down on one side or the other? More importantly, why has the church put a gag order on him if he's cured?

The agreement apparently has a stipulation that he not speak of the affair again. That really sounds like the kind of thinking that many fundamentalists really fall prey to. If you don't talk about a problem, it goes away! Well guess what? Haggard will continue to have problems until he comes to terms with his sexuality and admits that he has at least some attraction to men. Big deal? For a fundamentalist it is. They need to live in a constant struggle between God and Satan in order to keep their faith going. It's all about good and evil and personal salvation. The problem is they get so bogged down in dispensationalism they forget to follow Jesus and do His work. That stuff about feeding the hungry, advocating for the prisoner and clothing the naked takes a back seat to securing my seat in heaven.

I really don't like to throw stones at someone else's beliefs, but when you build your house out of very thin glass and insist on throwing rocks at everyone else, what do you expect? Haggard and his kind have made life miserable for us gay and lesbian people for years. Using us as a cause du jour for fundraising and aiming lots of hatred our way. That's why Ted was outed in the first place. The guy he was paying for sex and drugs had a revelation. He saw the hypocrisy and decided to do something about it. Good for him! Some day he might even be considered a prophet, someone who speaks truth to power. If only we had more like him that would speak out and drive the homophobic hate mongers out of their closets.