Worshipping The Crystal Methiah

Alternate Titles: "God Bless This Meth," "Gaydenfreude."

Oh, okay, so the hard-right homophobic evangelical leader is merely a drug addict. Just so long as he isn't gay...

The Rev. Ted Haggard, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and one of the nation’s most influential Christian leaders, admitted today that he had purchased the illegal drug methamphetamine from a gay escort in Denver, but denied that he ever had sex with the man.

Mr. Haggard resigned as president of the evangelical association and stepped aside as senior pastor of the New Life mega-church in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Thursday after Michael Forest Jones, a self-described former gay prostitute, accused him of having a sexual affair for three years and using the drug, commonly known as crystal meth, during those encounters.

(...)

Speaking to the Denver television station KUSA outside his house in Colorado Springs today, Mr. Haggard said a Denver hotel referred him to Mr. Jones for the purpose of getting a massage. He said he met with Mr. Jones and bought the drug. “I was tempted, I bought it, but I did not use it,” he said today. The station posted the video interview on its Web site.

(...)

He also had said he had never met the man making the accusation.

Um. So... which is it, then? Was he buying the meth through the mail? Over the intermeths?

Mr. Jones, 49, told KUSA that Mr. Haggard had paid him for sex over the last three years, and that he had methamphetamine several times.

“People may look at me and think what I’ve done is immoral,” Mr. Jones, who said he is no longer a prostitute, told KUSA. “But I think I had to do the moral thing in my mind, and that is expose someone who is preaching one thing and doing the opposite behind everybody’s back.”

(...)

Mr. Haggard has been a supporter of an amendment to the state’s Constitution banning same-sex marriage, on which Coloradans will vote next week....

“It made me angry that here’s someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex,” Mr. Jones said.

So who to believe? The right-wing fundamentalist leader who hates Teh Gay, or the ex-gay prostitute who hates Teh Hypocrisy? It's a tough call, but I'll pick the ex-gay prostitute every time, as long as his name isn't Gannon. Or isn't not really Gannon. Or, um...


I'll come in again.