Like the proverbial bad penny, Ted Haggard, the evangelical minister involved in a gay sex scandal a few years ago, keeps popping back up in the limelight. Last night, he and his family appeared on the reality show “Celebrity Wife Swap,” after he and Hollywood actor Gary Busey traded wives. Isn’t there something innately un-Christian about that?

The women actually lived in each other’s houses for a week. They did each other’s chores, too. 

Haggard, for those who may not remember, was pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs in 2006 when Mike Jones, a gay male hustler, came forward to say that the fundamentalist preacher had been hiring him for sex for three years. He was also buying methamphetamine for their encounters.

Denying that he was gay and stating that he bought the drugs but never used them (like a certain ex-president who didn’t inhale?), Haggard entered some sort of recovery program overseen by ministers. At the end of three weeks, one of the “men of god” declared Haggard to be “completely heterosexual.” 

Those ministers had better go back and re-do the test they used because last January, Haggard told GQ magazine: “I think that probably, if I were 21 in this society, I would identify myself as bisexual.” No shit, Sherlock. He admitted that he used to watch gay porn and masturbated compulsively. But now he only has sex with his wife. And I’m supposed to believe that, why?

Reality shows make me puke, so I didn’t watch the program last night, but highlights that I read about this morning include Busey introducing Haggard’s wife Gayle to a Sioux Indian who described the preacher’s spouse as “a lost soul.” Could it have anything to do with her decision to remain with hubbie after the 2006 scandal?

Then there was Steffanie Sampson, Busey’s partner and mother of his kid, running a bible study group for Gayle Haggard and telling the participants that she and her boyfriend “are married in spirit though we have not had the human ceremony.” 

Sampson was seen reading excerpts from Haggard’s book (who doesn’t publish a book after their public scandal?) and then questioning him about his description of Mike Jones as a tool of the devil. She asked point blank (ya gotta love Sampson, she didn’t mince words) if he thought all queers were tools of Satan. He said no.

He also said that he welcomes gays and all people into his new church. 

However, Haggard was “hesitant” about gay marriage. He only supports gay unions. “The historic definition has been a heterosexual monogamous union,” he told her. Like his? 

Sampson then put it right out there; she replied that if two people love each other they should have the right to get married and enjoy the same benefits as straight folks.

Sampson’s conclusion? “Ted cannot speak freely about certain things because he really has to be the public-faced Ted and say what he thinks the public wants to hear.”

In essence, Ted Haggard is nothing more than a showman who knows how to stay on top because he understands what his audience wants. And he gives it to them in droves.