Haggard & Santorum RIP

I was just surfing Brent Rasmussen's blog, and he has a quote from the very wonderful Dan Savage (of Savage Love) about Ted Haggard's fall from grace. You remember Ted Haggard. He's the guy who led a homophobic evangelical church and went on and on and on about how terrible gayness was. Surprise, surprise, it turns out he was a "liar and a deceiver". But as Dan points out, there is a special level of hypocrisy in Ted Haggard's behaviour, as he was one of the leading advocates of the idea that sexual "aberrance" could be cured by following the proper path of Jesus. Dan writes:

"If you believe that Jesus Christ can change the sexual orientation of a believer, why on earth did he refuse to cure Haggard? Haggard founded a church that has 14,000 members! Thousands were brought to Christ by Haggard's preaching. Mixed in with Ted's meth-fueled gay-sex romps and hypocritical gay-bashings were, without a doubt, thousands of good works.

Did Jesus help Haggard out? No. Haggard struggled with temptation all his life. He tried to battle off his "dark" desires, but nothing proved effective. There was no cure for Haggard, no miracle. No matter how long he struggled, no matter how much faith he had, Haggard's sexual orientation remained unchanged. Nothing helped. Not prayer, not Jesus H. Christ on his cross.

Nothing.

If giving his heart to Jesus couldn't cure Haggard, what hope is there for the likes of me? If Jesus can't be bothered to work a miracle for the most powerful evangelical minister in the country, what "hope" is there for the average dyke?

None.

The ex-gay thing is over. It's dead. It was bullshit from the start, and it's bullshit now."

Very nice. Dan's column also talks about his part in the defeat of Senator Rick Santorum in the recent elections for the US senate. He links to this video clip where the ex-Senator attacks "liberals" for being, supposedly, inherently evil and irresponsible.

Quite staggeringly amusingly, Santorum says repeatedly that liberals believe that they should be allowed to do whatever they want to do - have abortions, have sex, whatever they like - and at each turn you can see him choking down the words "...as long as no-one gets hurt". Because, of course, those words destroy his whole argument.

What a wanker.