Are the “Religious Right” leaders hiding something? It surely looks that way, considering another Ted Haggard bomb has exploded. Rev. Louis Sheldon has quietly given an interview with The Jewish Week , revealing a dirty secret: many of the upper tier leaders knew Ted Haggard was gay well before the scandal broke.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Then, as if things could not get worse, there was the disgrace of Sheldon's own friend and colleague, Rev. Ted Haggard, the Colorado mega-church leader and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an even bigger pillar of Republican support on the Christian right. Sheldon disclosed that he and “a lot” of others knew about Haggard's homosexuality “for awhile ... but we weren't sure just how to deal with it.”
Months before a male prostitute publicly revealed Haggard's secret relationship with him, and the reverend's drug use as well, “Ted and I had a discussion,” explained Sheldon, who said Haggard gave him a telltale signal then: “He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn't. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that.”
Rev. Sheldon is by no means a shrinking violet small player in the Religious Right – he's been at the political game since 1980 with his own group, The Values Coalition , and his daughter runs the People for the American Way group. I would also guess he has some clout, considering his association with Ted Haggard, and he claims to speak on behalf of 43,000 churches. We're not talking about a man who isn't in the loop, we're dealing with a politically well-connected man.
There are many strange things about this latest wrinkle in the Ted Haggard story that has convinced me the leaders of the Religious Right need a trip to the woodshed for a good old-fashioned switchin'. The hypocrisy on this news story is unfortunate and sickening. You see, Rev. Sheldon is very involved in the anti-gay movement, yet he kept Haggard's secret – why?
The Bible calls on us to judge sin and to remove sexually immoral people from our presence, yet when Rev. Sheldon should've been blowing the whistle, he didn't. It wouldn't be hard to guess why:
- It would defrock a fellow member of the cloth.
- It would reduce the number of high powered evangelicals in direct contact with the White House, advancing their agenda.
- It would reduce the perceived effectiveness of the Religious Right in the eyes of thirty million plus evangelicals Haggard claims to represent, even if they had revealed this and changed leadership well before the elections.
- It might alienate the Republican evangelical base the White House desperately depending on to put them over the top in the 2006 midterm elections.
- They were more interested in earthly power versus heavenly power, and were complicit in keeping each other's secrets in order to maintain that power.
The revelation of a lot of people knowing Haggard was gay – the timing, and the outlet in which it was released, also speaks like a megaphone on full volume. The admission of truth came after the elections in a blatant attempt to minimize the damage. The fact the interview was done in a Jewish paper instead of a major Christian media outlet also confirms there was an element of fear in confessing leaders knew the allegations were true. In essence, they are still trying to minimize the damage to their religious empire.
In reality, how many Christians read Jewish newspapers, even if they are Christian Zionists? I don't have anything to base this on, but I'm venturing a guess (based on hectic lifestyles and little time) the percentage would be on the low side. What would lower this even further would be the fact this publication isn't well known; most Christians would turn to the
Jerusalem Post ,
Haaretz ,
Arutz Sheva , or the
Jewish Forward - not The Jewish Week.
I have to personally question if this is why Dr. Dobson, who had signed onto Haggard's rehabilitation team, abruptly dropped him like a hot potato. If he knew the interview was coming out and it's proven at some point in the future Dobson knew of the gay issue long before the scandal surfaced, it could tank his ministry like a rock. Again, I don't have anything to base this on other than Dobson's own words of calling Haggard his “friend”, and “very good friend”, and having known him for years. Sheldon, for all his faults, at least admitted he knew well before the scandal.
If many of the top leadership in the Religious Right knew Haggard was gay, his wife, Gayle, had to have some kind of inkling about that, too. It may be the case where Ted hid it well, however, a woman knows when something isn't right in her marriage. If by chance she honestly didn't know, I'm sort of wondering why God didn't let her in on it, and she had to find out at the hands of media jackals. If her woman's intuition, her husband's behavior, or God didn't let her in on the secret, then there's always the principle of “loose lips sink ships” – no one can ever keep their mouth shut, and the rumor would've made it to her ears.
