What Haggard Means
My own initial reaction, and probably a lot of political liberals, to the troubles of Ted Haggard, included at least a small sense of schadenfreude. But the matter is bigger than politics, bigger than religion.
I mostly sat on my hands and wondered to myself how the fundamentalist right would react. While I was doing that, one of my more thoughtful UU sistren was penning a response that really cuts to the heart of a lot of our cultural issues, and makes clear the real lesson from Ted Haggard. listen:
Ted Haggard dramatically illustrates how soul damaging the denial of the blessing of sexual difference is. How different his life would have been had he accepted his own sexual attractions and made decisions about his sexuality that were life affirming rather than so now ultimately destructive to himself and his family.
We’re going to hear a lot of talk about forgiveness and redemption by people on the right as they discuss this case. And surely our hearts go out to Reverend Haggard and his family as they go through these difficult days.
May we pray for God’s grace that perhaps at least some will see how their own hateful attitudes towards GLBT people need forgiveness as well.
Well said.
