Sunday, January 1, 2012

HAGGARD AND DRAWN (and Quartered) HYP! HYP! HYPOCRISY!


[Another old post from the soon to disappear Lion and Pen web site is this originally posted November 3, 2006]


I now offer for your delectation one Pastor Ted Haggard. Kind, smiling, Pastor Ted of the New Life Church adjacent to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Pastor Ted who is a graduate of (where else?) Oral Roberts University founded by a man who made his fortune as a televangelist and tent show huckster pulling chicken livers from suffering rubes and claiming that god had just allowed him to draw out their cancers. Pastor Ted who believes, "The Holy Bible, and only the Bible, is the authoritative Word of God. It alone is the final authority for determining all doctrinal truths. In its original writing, the Bible is inspired, infallible and inerrant." He also believes that, "we don't have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity, it's written in the Bible." Pastor Ted who was, until today, President of the National Association of Evangelicals and claims to have an identity of views with our Fearless Leader, Dubya, as well as having a long association with that pillar of traditional values, James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Yes, kind, smiling Pastor Ted, quick to condemn same-sex marriage and homosexuality seems to have been living in a world with a slight disconnect from our own...I mean apart from the half-assed fundamentalist world (forgive the tautology).

You see that one of the things that kept Pastor Ted smiling was his 3-year affair with a male prostitute from whom he also bought crystal meth. Now, we have to allow that Pastor Ted claims not to have used the crystal meth (only his teeth and brain cells know for sure!) but then he surely must still have it, mustn't he? Isn't that a lot like not inhaling? Or was he just doing an errand for his buddy, Dubya?

I do want to be clear here. If kind, smiling Pastor Ted is gay, I wish him well. It may have some ill effects on his wife and 5 children, but accepting his own sexual identity is generally a good thing. But pardon me while I roll on the floor and hold my sides that are about to split with laughter. Kind, smiling Pastor Ted hasn't much to dispute with his fellow fundamentalist hatemonger, Fred Phelps, when it comes to homosexuality. That he's been getting "massages" from a male "masseur" for the past 3 years just goes off the scale on the hypocrisy meter. This one is even more fun that watching Fox News make Mark Foley a Democrat! And, I'm sure that the fun is only starting as there are bound to be rousing statements from other icons of the cynical exploitation of religion and its unquestioning followers like Dobson, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Chuck Colson and the rest of the "Jesus is a Nazi too" crowd.
The gag may be waving the flag
That began with a mystical hand
Hip hooray!
The American way
The world is a stage,
The stage is a world of entertainment
- Howard Dietz (Arthur Schwartz - composer)

Oh, how I love it!

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