By November of 2006 Ted Haggard was at his professional peak:  pastor of the humongous New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization of 45,000 churches whose mission is to consolidate the influence of American Protestant Christians. And Pastor Ted was indeed influential, so much so that he exuded a disarming generosity to his political opponents and the media, using his winning personality and cutting edge technology to spread Christ’s teachings and hold sway with the Bush White House, the Republican Party, and conservatives in general. Interviews with Haggard for documentaries show an enormously likeable man who talked about sex often and comfortably. His position on the subject:  homosexual sex is wrong, as made crystal clear in the bible, and heterosexual sex between married, evangelical spouses is better and more frequent than that of the general population. His pronouncements, offensive and reductive to some, are tempered by his miles-wide smile, broadly open face, and almost girlfriend-like demeanor, a man whose persona, admittedly filtered through youtube.com, seems incapable of true exclusion in any kind of personal way.

~ ~ ~

After days of speculation among television talking heads about allegations that Haggard had sex with and bought drugs from a male prostitute, an apparently chastened Pastor Ted admitted to the nation and his congregation that he had engaged in occasional sin (“immoral sexual behavior”) with the accuser and had consequently agreed to resign his position at both his own church and the national alliance.  He was instant fodder for pundits, and particularly ridiculed months later when, after a mere three weeks of intensive, preacher-administered therapy, he was pronounced “completely heterosexual.”

 Who on earth believed that?  Sophisticates knew instantly that the so-called therapy was a sham, beyond even the typical faith-healing, TV evangelist con act.  This was among the most obvious, simplistic solutions to a political embarrassment to come along in a while.  But his followers and the knee-jerk religious conservatives—surely they know as well?  Surely they see not only the expedience of the slick recovery but that the man is clearly, clearly, gay—Don’t they?

 David France wrote in a feature piece for New York Magazine that  “gaydar,” the sense of knowing without any affirmation that someone is gay, is legitimate; that is, that there are particular physiological characteristics that occur, in statistical significance, in the homosexual population.  He acknowledges that those who claim that Ted Haggard’s sexual orientation was something less than a revelation were operating on an intuitive understanding based on science. The information is fascinating:  gays are more likely to have counterclockwise hair whorls and longer index fingers as compared to their ring fingers, for example.  France, who himself is gay, has collected the conclusions from a growing body of research in the field[1] and expresses ambivalence at how the information will be received.  He is mostly optimistic that this kind of work will ultimately gain rights for gays and steal some ammunition from those who dismiss sexual preference as a choice and, worse, consider gays sinners and subhuman.  He understands, though, that the complexity unfolding—the confounding riddle that only 50 percent of gay identical twins share a sexual orientation with their siblings, for example—could also cement bias, and that the newly identified shared traits, like hair whorls, could become red flags that invite mistreatment.

 ~ ~ ~

 Just over three years later, Ted Haggard is in the news again, making the rounds with his wife Gayle, who wrote a book about forgiveness and “the marriage I’ve always longed for,” as she told Meredith Viera of NBC. Haggard’s trials, apparently, are no more organic than a dieter who says “I’m not going to eat that today,” and then eats that today. To Oprah Winfrey’s question, “Are you gay?” Haggard says he did wonder about that. He asked a therapist, “Am I gay? Am I straight? Am I bi? What am I?" I find his recounting poignant--both for his naivte in the asking and for the potential for devastation in the answers.  His therapist’s response seems to sit well with him: “You are a heterosexual. With homosexual attachments.”

 I feel weary just imagining the complexity of living a life as inauthentic as Haggard. But my contempt for the man’s foolish self-deception falls away when I realize that he, like all of us, is suffering the indignity of existence. He is journeying through the same muck of fear and anxiety as we are. Plato said it best: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”