Following a link here to here I was glad to read someone who wanted to do more than rub poor Ted Haggard's nose in the fact that he was a big fat hypocrite. While Duncan seemed to voice very little sympathy for the former Rev. Haggard, and Balkin was more interested in the psychological destruction (as well as familial destruction) wrought by religious repression of sexual desire defined as sinful, even evil, my own perspective is one of compassion. I feel for Haggard, for his wife and children. Psychology aside (and how many armchair shrinks are really qualified to comment in such a way?), I have a theological question for Rev. Haggard, should he stumble across this site: How can something created by God (you), called good by God (again, you) be inherently evil? You as an individual are certainly more than the sum of your physical, psychological, and emotional make-up, but your sexuality is certainly a part and parcel of what makes you Ted Haggard. You are a child of God, created and loved, and even now redeemed. Do you think Satan creates these desires, these feelings, these longings? Do you think that, if only you pray harder, fast more, and preach more loudly against same-sex erotic desire, God will come and rescue your libido from Satan's wiles?
I would propose an alternative. You are a child of God, created in love, nurtured in love, called by God to be a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Your mistake, and it is a mistake many Christians want to make, is supposing that some kinds of love are wrong and therefore a bar to doing what God calls you to do, from being whom God created you to be. In the first epistle of St. John, we are reminded that God is love, and we only love because God first loved us. Whether you love women or men, or perhaps even both, that love is not a sin, does not come from Satan, is not something to be elminated, eradicated, or otherwise hidden under the bushel of denial and repression. Love, as it comes from God, is not wrong, and cannot be wrong.
Your only sin (I am not concerned with question of crimes here; that is another matter entirely for the local authorities) is to believe that the most precious of God's gifts to humanity, love, can be evil. Your only sin is to believe that by loving other men as men love women you are evil. That displays a tremendous lack of faith - in God, in God's creation, and in the good child of God that you are. It is not being a bisexual or gay man that is wrong. It is denying it to the point that it explodes in a way calculated to destroy you and all you hold dear that is wrong. Would your life be where it is today if, years ago, you had said to yourself, "I am gay, but God still loves me and calls me to preach the Gospel of grace"?
