Hate the Sinner, Love the Sin

The time has come for the anti-gay movement in America to do a bit of soul-searching. And, if the recent turmoil within its ranks is any indication, some serious therapy wouldn’t hurt either.

Americans have watched the downfall of Reverend Ted Haggard with a mixture of shock and, well, shock. The man who just one month ago was one of the nation’s most respected evangelical leaders, president of the 30 million strong National Association of Evangelicals, and one of the country’s most outspoken critics of homosexuality, seems to have been fibbing. In particular, he sparked some confusion late last month when a former male escort, Mike Jones of Denver, accused Haggard of having solicited sexual relations and narcotics from him multiple times over a three year period. Haggard, after a bit of denial, some nervous laughter and a few calls of “election year politics,” then publicly admitted that he was indeed “a deceiver and a liar” and guilty of “sexual immorality.”

Needless to say, this admission leaves the National Association of Evangelicals, as well as the evangelical community at large, in a bit of a bind. After all, Haggard has consistently preached that there can be “no debate about what we should think about homosexual activity—it’s written in the Bible.” He makes a pretty compelling point. But one imagines that even the closest, most devout reading of the Good Book will not yield any loopholes concerning outspoken male prostitutes. So, either we’re reading Leviticus wrong, or it might be time for some debate.

Specifically, conservative religious factions in the United States who actively oppose granting marriage and other rights to homosexuals need to use their heads and look into their hearts on this one. Rather than trying to rapidly distance themselves from the once-beloved Pastor Ted, who was a spiritual leader and a role model for many religious Christians for years, they should take this time to consider what actually caused this man’s unfortunate downfall.

Please, listen to Pastor Ted: “There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life,” he wrote in a letter to his congregation. Now, subtract the self-loathing and jihad rhetoric, and what are you left with? A man who has been fighting with himself for all of his adult life. Not the effeminate, tradition-flaunting liberal who has decided to be countercultural, but a deeply pious man who has tried his very hardest to suppress his desires because of the demands of his religion, and, as a result, found only despair and shame.

This is not a man who has chosen his sexual preference. If ever there was someone who would have rejected homosexuality, it would have been Ted Haggard, and, even given his undoubtedly immoral indiscretions, it is despicable that evangelicals would rather promptly turn their backs on one of their most devoted leaders than consider this possibility.

But that is precisely what is happening. According to Reverend Louis Sheldon, another champion of the Christian Right, in an interview with The Jewish Week, “[Haggard] said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn’t. But I knew he was covering up. They need to say that.” Where could Haggard have gotten the kooky, left-wing impression that homosexuality was innate, not chosen? Probably from that kooky, left-wing thing called personal experience. Or does the Bible trump that, too?

It is time to get a grip. According to a 2003 Pew Forum poll, 42 percent of Americans believe that homosexuality “is just the way that some people prefer to live,” in what is an insidiously easy assumption to make. Haggard’s case, making no excuses for his behavior, is a telling example of precisely why such a claim, widespread as it is, stretches the imagination to no end. When a pious man with everything to lose tries to deny his true nature, yet still fails—and is forced into deception and disgrace by the constraints ofhis religion—then it is time to question those constraints.

Pastor Ted has inadvertently provided us with a sermon far more profound and honest than any of his others: it is no one’s place to oppress people’s lives by denying them the opportunity to be happy and live as they truly are. It is no man’s place to play God.

Michael Segal ’09 is a biochemical sciences concentrator in Cabot House.