losing it.

This thing with Haggard is exactly what routinely disappointed me about the elders in the social structure of my parents' religion when I was young.  I always thought these people were actually trying to live by the tenets they'd supposedly based their entire lives around, only to find out that church staff (yeah, I know) member so-and-so had been raping one of his daughters all of her young life, and keeping it quiet by threatening to rape one or more of her sisters if she spoke out, a family I was friends with, and had spent time with at their house; or to discover that a church counselor, someone *I'd* been counseled by, a married man and a father, had been carrying on some lengthy affairs with his counselees (young women under the legal age limit, in some cases).  The youth pastor cheating on his wife with a woman from the youth group, while his wife, a really cool chick who I had loved, really loved, a girl from so-Cal who used to surf and -- I mean, she really surfed, got up at the crack o' before school, rode for a few hours, then raced to class with wet hair and sand in her clothes -- was now constantly caring for their two sets of twin sons (all of which were under the age of two) WHILE PREGNANT WITH THEIR THIRD SET.  While he CHEATED ON HER.  Yeah. 

p.s. Notice the theme?  All men.  All older, white men who performed these sick acts.  Just sayin'.  (power issues *ahem*, *cough*)

Any wonder that my attempts to follow such a religion would fall apart at the seams?  (Although there were many, many other reasons that contributed: one of the most significant being that I came to recognize, during my early twenties, that the bizarro system of belief, the suggestion that my devout, practicing family must be, assuredly was right, while an equally devout, equally-regularly-practicing family in some other country following their country's more-or-less-national religion must be, somehow, wrong, simply because they were in the wrong place, with the wrong set of faith tenets, was utter idiocy.)

Anyway.  I find it laughable, and simultaneously typical, that Dr. Dobson would stick up for the asshole.  These guys are thick as thieves.

My prayer, lately, has been that these people are all gonna go to jail for their easy, indolent picking of our country's pocketbook, in the name of saving (unborn) babies and crucifying gay people for wanting to have the option to lead normal lives.  Oh, and getting 2,815 (and counting) American troops killed.  Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many of whom were children my son's age.  But we have babies to save, I thought?  Which is why people like my mom keep voting for GW's crew?  Saving the babies?  Well, I suppose that since these babies were already born (unless one counts the Iraqi women who were pregnant when they were killed), they don't count as being worth saving.

I could vomit, but I don't have much left except bile.  And bile is hard to throw up.

Still, I may throw it up at some point, if these things continue and we remain under the helm of the current administration's long, dark cloak for a further length of time.

*And, for the record, I'm not suggesting that Democratic leadership is gonna unquestionably be a major change; rather, I believe that lately, the party has been infused from within by a gigantic swell of regular people who care about our country, and the Dem leadership is going to have to reckon with them if they try to do the same thing the Republican party has done in their bankrupting of our defenses and federal reserves.  And souls.  And minds.  Etc.

Oh.  And while I'm still straddling this wobbly soap container, I think this is amazing.  Keith Olbermann is a smart, articulate man, and he makes his point well here.

*******

I never fail to leave an integral piece of my argument out when I post about the things that make my articulation skills plummet like balloons full of mud, that is, family stuff, religion, politics.  You know, the little things.  I did it again, here, when I forgot to make it crystal-clear that I, in no way, take issue with Haggard (and it occurs to me that the name's particularly apropos for him today) for having shagged a man.  Or even done drugs.  These things are fine for individuals with privacy rights to opt to do.  However, it's that a) he's a hypocrite, given his current stance against homosexuality, and b) he has cheated on his wife, and hurt his children in so doing, that makes this not right; because if he's a gay man, then he should be living as a homosexual and not masquerading as a hetero.  This is my major beef with fundamentalism; that people aren't entitled to do as they wish, as long as those wishes aren't harming others.  Being gay isn't harmful for anyone (unless the person who's gay is condemned to misery based on the attempt by, in this case, xtian fundamentalists to paint them as less-than, and said person then attempts to live as a hetero, causing undue misery for the family as well as himself when situations like Haggard's come to light, as they always seem to eventually do). 

So I'm left with this: fundamentalism doesn't seem to work with democratic principles, although to suggest that people shouldn't be entitled to have bigoted beliefs also doesn't seem democratic; but, obviously, people can think whatever they want, so long as those thoughts don't extend into the public sphere, causing others' rights to become curtailed.  How do we make it work, then?  Providing people with the right to bigoted thoughts/belief systems, without allowing those beliefs to commingle with the way in which our government allocates respect/allowance for the individual behaviors and rights of its citizens? 

Oh.  I have an idea!  Keep ideals and governance separate!  Like, you know, separate the places, or halls, where people talk about those ideals from the halls of government.  You could even describe the ideal-halls as something like, oh, um, let's say churches.  For fun.  So: churches, and their ideas, and the ideas of their members, and the people who lead them, remain separate from the management of the government.  Iow, separation of church and state!  Brilliant, non?

It's just a wacky idea, though.  It'll never take hold.  Dr. Dobson would piss all over it.

Comments

[Thailand Gal]

My question is about the term "relationship". There are a lot of ways to say things ~ to sort of step along the edges of the truth ~ without really stepping off (in your mind, at least). I think he is trying to do that. He just had a gay "encounter" but there was no relationship because they weren't committed to each other.

Uh-huh. . .and babies are born under cabbage leaves.

Peace,

Thailand Gal
~*~*~

[ewe_are_here]

The hypocrisy is amazing, isn't it. Sigh.

Although, I have to admit, I did get briefly stuck at and have to re-read the mention of the woman with two sets of twin boys under the age of two. Who is expecting yet another set!! Shudder.

[toyfoto]

That's why I don't trust people who wear their religion like a badge. I believe the real and true people with faith realize what a personal experience it is.

[qt]

Ugh -well, I am not defending the guy, but at least he went and paid for it instead of coercing some young member of his parish to live out his gayness with him -still a Class A hypocrite, tho.

I, too, was brought up in a strict Catholic sense and now I have nothing to do with the church. The continued exposure of people involved in the Christian faith as pedophiles at the worst, closeted, escort-hiring, meth-smoking gay men at best(umm, ok, I seriously don't care that he is gay), is depressing to me and I wonder if ANYONE thinks about the roots of Christianity and how it came to be a religion! It has become synonymous with money -selling books, tapes, TV shows -corruption and full-on hatred of anyone different from themselves.

What about "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? The Golden Rule is the only thing consistent across all religions, and modern Christians do not follow this at all.

[julia]

Great stuff. I love Keith Olberman. He's replaced Anderson Cooper as my newscrush du jour.

I can't really add anything, since I agree with everything you've said.

[liv]

Preachin' to the converted, sister. We must have the same things on our minds as I was just ranting about my nut job folks' strange journey to fundamentalism.

sheesh!

[marcie]

I liken these people to an America Taliban. If they could have their way we would have a religious government just like Iran. But do they see it that way??? No, because their religion is the Right religion. It's just truly scary.
I'm so proud of you for getting out of all that, it shows that you think for yourself. So many people don't.
One note on Haggard, a downside to this story was that he was pushing for fundamentalists to take global warming seriously. Now that this has happened they will probably consider global warming to be part of the homosexual agenda.

[Kristen]

Separation of church and state?! Are you CRAZY, woman!? People would be DOING things that the church doesn't APPROVE of, and we can NOT! HAVE! THAT!

I'm so with you here. I wanted to say more than that, but you've already said everything so eloquently and I'll just botch my point or drone on and on, like I am now. Suffice it to say, "right on."

[Ortizzle]

Well said. Make that brilliant. This country has never forgotten its Puritanical Roots, and in spite of being in the 21st century, we seem to be moving backward, not forward. Maybe Haggard should just have taken his cue from Clinton and said, "I never had sex with that man." Ha, ha.

But back to your point, which is so true: it doesn't really matter a hoot whether he had a gay relationship, UNLESS, as you say, he is hurting others in the process. Or gay-bashing while actually being a closet gay. It's the hypocrisy that's killing us, these people who have the audacity to take the money of the faithful by the fistful, preach fire and brimstone to them for not being the best possible Christians, and then live like the worst possible heathens with the moral backbone of a psychopath. Well, maybe not that bad. They do resign sometimes, even though they are not, of course, guilty.

Anyway, loved your subsequent defense of separation of church and state. Even the Puritans got that right. ;-)

[meno]

That was nicely done, and passionate.
I fail to understand how this man could head an organization with one of it's main tenets being the wrongness of homosexuality, and then go out and hire a guy for gay sex.
What he must think of himself? Or else the denial will kick in, as usual, and he will go blindly on with his life.

[Pattie]

I couldn't agree more. Hey, whatever, if this guy is gay fine...did drugs? OK...but gee, he had an awful lot to say against gay marriage now didn't he? He lobbied hard against it over at the White House. Hypocrisy stinks in any form. It's pathetic.I think if these church leaders want to get involved in changing public policy by imposing their viewpoints on us, then perhaps the time has come for these institutions to start paying some damn taxes!

[Mommy off the Record]

The sad thing to me is that this Haggard thing doesn't surprise me at all. If it's true, I feel sorry for him for being such a sad person. I feel sorry for his family for now having to deal with this awful situation. And I feel sorry for people in this country (myself included) because our President believes in this religious fundamentalist garbage and he actually believes that GOD would not condone homosexuality and that he is doing GOD's will by defining marriage as only btw a man and a woman. Talk about no separation between Church and State.

And on a side note, what pisses me off the most is that he channels the "Almighty" in his speeches to condone and justify his attack on Iraq in which hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians have been murdered as a result of our invasion into that country. Paid for with our tax dollars. Yeah, it makes me want to vomit too.

[jaelithe]

Thank you so much for the link to the Olbermann piece. I need to watch that man more often. He rarely fails to impress me.

Most of the fanatical, blatantly self-righteous evangelical Christians I have gotten to know in real life have been liars and terrible hypocrites (I don't mean to imply that all Christians are liars and hypocrites, mind you, because I know plenty of nice, friendly, moral Christians, but most of the fanatical ones I've met, the ones who go around constantly proclaiming their faith and righteousness to everyone have been really bad people), so "revelations" like this never surprise me. I think there are an unfortunate number of people who use their religion-- whatever their religion-- as nothing more than a way of pretending to themselves and the world that they are better than everyone else. When one is completely convinced of one's own moral superiority, one perversely starts to believe one can get away with things other, "lesser" people can't.

[Lisa B]

This is the first time I've been to your site. Hear that sound? Its Me KICKING MYSELF for not visiting you sooner.

Rock on sister!

[Gillian]

So, the idea that Theocracies don't work and that we don't want to create a Theocracy in Iraq or Afghanistan could also mean we don't want to create a Theocracy here either because they bloody don't work and people like to kill one another to try to make them work when they do.not.work. Is that the main gist here.

[trish]

I was raised very religious and it was definitely disheartening to grow up and realize the extent of the hypocrisy.

[mothergoosemouse]

You know I'm with you. We've been hearing a lot about Haggard around here, being so geographically close to the fray.

[CrankMama]

Am frozen in terror at this line "while pregnant with their third set"... Poor poor former surfer girl. Did she kill him? What became of her?

I have one set of twins, was never a surfer, but oy! The thought.

Ted Haggard definitely gives hypocrisy a new poster boy!

[Ruth Dynamite]

Haggard. Rhymes with Swaggart.

I had bets going about how many days it would take before he claimed to have been (a) abused as a child and (b) addicted to something or other. His confession was the most shocking thing of all.

We're surrounded by lying rat bastard hypocrites.