"There Never Was a War that Was Not Inward": a long reflection on Ted Haggard

Though many things are percolating in my brain this morning, foremost on my mind is the Ted Haggard story.  By now, surely, almost everyone is familiar with the story; a quick and basic summary is here.

Some folks I know are delighted when stories like these come out.   In a sense, a certain amount of schadenfreude is understandable.  When the very people who condemn sexual sin are themselves brought down by that very sin, it's hard not to take a certain degree of satisfaction in hypocrisy exposed.  I have friends -- mostly secular -- who regard hypocrisy as the greatest of all possible sins.  Though it surely is no virtue to live a double life, I am less certain than they that to fall dramatically short of one's own professed ideals is the worst thing one can do.

Yesterday, in a letter to his congregation, Haggard said something remarkable, something that resonated with me instantly:

There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life.

I nodded with recognition when I heard that line.   Ted Haggard is my brother in Christ; he and I have been washed in the blood of the lamb.  Of course, my views on faith and sexual morality are quite different from the ones that he and his massive New Life Church profess. But I understand what it is to fight an outer war against an inner demon.  That's the sort of struggle Haggard seems to refer to.

For years and years in my life, I struggled with boundaries.  I had very poor emotional, physical, and sexual boundaries with virtually everyone in my life.  From my teens until I was 31, I didn't lead a double life -- I led a triple or quintuple one: affairs; inappropriate relationships with students; regular patterns of betrayal and deceit; addiction to alcohol and other drugs -- and a series of lies that created the most extraordinary house of cards.   God's grace, a great therapist, a wonderful Twelve Step program, and my own willingness to go to any lengths to turn my life around saved me.  I don't live as I once did.

But I remember what it was like to live in a world with fluid boundaries. I remember what it was like to have only a passing relationship with the truth. I remember what it was like to spend my days saying to myself, "God, if they (my family, friends, wives, lovers, students, colleagues) only knew the truth, they would all hate me!"  I remember the hypocrisy and the self-loathing very well.  And though I trust my God and I trust in my conversion, I don't think I am invulnerable to a dramatic, spectacular relapse.   Though I am more relaxed today than I once I was, I am always alert to the signs that I may be slipping back into old behavior.

So yes, I write a lot here on this blog about boundaries.   Writing as a Christian, writing as a man, writing as a pro-feminist, writing as a husband, writing as a former addict, I try and make a compelling case for boundaries.  My writing about older men-younger women relationships, student crushes, pornography, self-mutilation, and so forth is based on a mix of intellectual convictions, spiritual commitments, and painful personal trials.  I write because I recognize a part of me that is cold, cruel, and predatory -- what Haggard called "repulsive and dark."  My commitment to being a safe, loving, trustworthy man is in no small part rooted in my clear memory of my years as a dangerous, narcissistic, dishonest, boy.

I am happy to say that I don't lead a double life today.   Follow me around with a camera; listen to my phone conversations; track my website visits; chart my spending habits.  What I say I do I generally do and what I say I don't do I don't do.   Does this make me more virtuous than, say, a Ted Haggard?  No.  Ted is in the midst of a spectacular public fall.  My fall -- which ended with a 1998 suicide attempt and hospitalization -- was far less public.  It's only as a consequence of my humiliation and near-death experience that I am as committed to accountability as I now am.

And of course, accountability is a hugely important tool.  I check in a lot with a lot of people.  I make sure I get asked questions regularly about where I've been and what I've been doing.  I recommend, for example, the Covenant Eyes program, which is installed on both my work and home computers.  I have people in my life who monitor me -- not out of hostility but out of love.  They respect my transformation but know that a certain amount of darkness is always present inside of me, and as a result,to paraphrase Reagan, they "trust but verify."  Sometimes being held accountable feels intrusive.  But I know that giving up a certain amount of my privacy to loved ones and mentors is a small price to pay.  Today, I enjoy freedom from that crushing sense that I am leading multiple lives. I don't worry about what lies I told to whom.  And I don't wonder "What would they say if they knew?", because I know that all who ought to know, know.

Do I think Ted Haggard sinned?  Of course.  He betrayed his wife and family and congregation.  The guilt must be devastating for him; the pain enormous for his loved ones.  But if he and I are at all alike, I suspect that in the midst of his hurt and shame, there is an undercurrent of elation.  To finally have it all come out, have the secrets revealed, have the light shine in -- as awful as it is, when it happened to me it left me feeling giddy with relief.    I hope that on the next stage of his journey, Ted Haggard feels some of that giddiness along with his hurt.  I hope that he remembers the shame, too, and allows that memory to encourage him to surrender his pride and accept strict accountability measures.

Ted Haggard preached about the evils of homosexuality.  Perhaps, on his recovery journey, he will realize how dangerous it is to confuse one's own self-loathing with a political agenda.  Even now, as my MRA critics point out, I too can veer dangerously to confusing my personal narrative of transformation with a lack of sympathy for men who have not reached the conclusions I have reached.   My commitment to seeing men change is, I note, not solely rooted in my own story! It would be pop-psychology and reductionism at its most superficial to suggest that those of us who are passionate about any given issue are only acting to resolve inner emotional conflicts.  There is such a thing as a genuine conviction that is separate from one's own peculiar pathologies, and I am convinced that both my faith and my feminism fall into that category.  But there is no question that for many of us, our own private pain and our public politics are often tied together.

Marianne Moore famously wrote that

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war.

To put it far less eloquently, if we are going to be truly effective evangelists and teachers and politicians and activists, we must wage an inner battle as well as an outer one.  This is not a recipe for self-involved navel gazing at the expense of public service.  It's a recognition that it is in our nature to hate what we are, to rage against the very things we fear most about ourselves.   Ted Haggard admitted as much yesterday, and I am reminded I must regularly do the same.  I must fight -- we all must fight -- till we have conquered in ourselves what causes all the wars, big and small.

Comments

[Joe smith]

You installed spyware on your own computer? Who does it report to?

[West Coast Arwen]

As someone who (secularly) hates hypocrisy in such as Haggard, let me say that it's not this:
"I am less certain than they that to fall dramatically short of one's own professed ideals is the worst thing one can do."
that bothers me.

I am quite aware of what it is to be human, and am therefore, sympathetic, empathetic, and compassionate about ALL of us who set ourselves standards and fall short. That is the nature of humanity: we have glorious vision and can't always reach those heights.

I am someone who regularly fails, for example, to be the perfect parent of my pre-parenting imaginings. I've snapped at my eldest when busy with other things; I've apologized.

But here's the rub. I do not go up to people in the street and *shame* them for failures I also have. I do not threaten to take their children away. I do not suggest that all parents who snap must be considered Not-Parents, and tell them they are damned to eternal hellfire.

I do not even assume that my parenting goals are their parenting goals. Or that their children are like my children. Or their lives mirror mine.

The problem that lights my anger is that this man, whose homosexual feelings were expressed in shame and darkness, dares to try and force that shame on people innocent of the stain.

The fact that Haggard's repulsive and dark urges, his demonization and narcissism, made themselves known through his homosexual feelings does not make other homosexuals repulsive and dark.

THAT is the most blatant narcissism, and is the sin at which I point the finger. Not that he has repulsive and dark places - we ALL do - but that he has given them wholly to another group of people to carry: that it is two men making love that are the problem.

It is catagorically not. Nor is it women's fault, for all the rapists; nor is it people of colour's fault, for all the racists. If a serial rapist feels shame about how he preforms sex, it is not the fault of heterosexual sex, or heterosexuals in general. IT IS HIS FAULT.

It is not failing to live up to a standard that makes me so angry. It is giving your shit to a whole group and saying - You're the problem, not me.

I see no indication that Haggard is addressing or rectifying that sin; no indication that he will do anything but come back against homosexuals in his "war" with his own demons.

[Kathy McCarty]

West Coast Arwen: You said it!

I agree that it is TRUE, we all have our dark places. But we don't all go out and preach hatred and worse against other people that we actually (guiltily) INDENTIFY with. It would be as though you, Hugo, in your darker times, used your power as a teacher and counselor to convince others that the women and girls you preyed upon WERE SLUTS AND DESERVED TO BE BEATEN, KILLED, or HAVE THEIR CHILDREN TAKEN AWAY.

THAT's why it seems like no one is giving this guy a break. He hasn't even realized yet what he did wrong. It wasn't getting caught (probably his first thought) and it wasn't even his sexual and drug failings; the REAL crime was/is his projection of his own self-loathing onto INNOCENT people, and his rabble-rousing aginst the innocents.

[ks]

I'm just going to agree with what West Coast Arwen and Kathy McCarty said, as they said it way better and more eloquently than I could have.

But I do want to add that I'm one of those who found the schadenfreude of the whole thing to be just delicious.

[Victoria Marinelli]

If you told me last week that today I'd be feeling a smidge (just a smidge, mind you) of sympathy for a homophobic idealogue who has spent years purposely seeking the erosion and/or denial of specific human rights, I'd have said you were mad. Yet today, in fact, I did. Which is not to say that I'll continue to have that feeling.

He asks for forgiveness, and he includes in that request forgiveness for the man who risked a great deal to bring all of this hypocrisy to light. At a time when, of course, many of the fundies were ready to chase after "the accuser" with torches in hand. (Which is not to say that many of them haven't remained of that mindset.)

What matters most to me, of course, is whether Haggard takes this turn of events as an opportunity to reexamine his sexuality (and his political and religious ideas of same) honestly, or whether he'll continue with the "I have demons" schtick, which is just so pathetic and sad. (And oppressive, destructive.)

David Brock came around, didn't he? Really, who could have predicted that the dogmatic arch-conservative who wrote that hateful piece of crap about Anita Hill would go on to found Media Matters.

So, you never know.

Though of course, I'm not going to hold my breath, waiting for Haggard to grow a conscience. By which I mean, not just the conscience that recognizes the harms inherent in his matrimonial deceit; here, indeed, the personal is extremely political.

[SamChevre]

Arwen, I'm having trouble making sense of your comments.

For me, it's the sins I'm most familiar with that I'm most forcefully against--that I look for when I'm hearing stories, and warn people against whenever I see an opening. I don't view that as hypocrisy, or as demonization--I view it as, I'll warn you about what I know.

In concrete terms--I've heard my grandfather's stories about being badly beaten by his father; I've heard my father's stories about my grandfather attempting to kick him down a flight of stairs; I have my scars from being hit with random objects that were at hand when my father was furious; and I have my own memories of badly hurting my brother when I was furious. I'm going to warn people against expressing anger uncontrolledly or unthinkingly; I'm very very VERY scared by that particular demon. Similarly, I spent years--too many years--waking up with the intention of proving that I was better than the people that had treated me badly; I-will-MAKE-them-respect-me and one-day-I-will-get-even-with-them got me up for years when I'd otherwise have been too depressed to function. But running on malice and greed cost me too much--cost me friends, cost me health, came perilously close to costing me sanity. Of course I will warn people about being consumed by money, or consumed by revenge; those roads are fiercely dangerous and I've been down them way too far to have any delusions on that score.

On the other hand, alcohol has not been one of my problems. I'm not going to spend that much time warning people against substance abuse. I don't know it in my bones the way I do anger and greed. So why not let Hugo--or my friend Mark, who ended up in jail for drunken stupidity--talk about that problem? They actually know something about it.

[Hugo]

I don't think Schadenfreude is ever justified, folks. No matter what, no matter what, no matter what. Joy in another's misfortune is, in fact, a fairly major sin. I stood up for Bill Clinton in 1998, I stood up for Mel Gibson in 2006, I stand up for Ted Haggard now. This is not an indicator that I think the conduct of any of these men is acceptable -- but when I hear that someone has fallen, that someone is hurting, I hurt with them. Regardless of who they are or what they did.

[Phil Hoover-Chicago]

Hugo, this, in my humble opinion, is one of the Best POSTS that you have written.

I met Pastor Haggard about 15 years ago at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. I still have close friends who are part of that congregation.

I cannot begin to imagine the pain those wonderful saints of God are experiencing.

But I do pray for them. I pray for their former Shepherd, and I pray for his family.

The words of 1 Corinthians 10:11-14 really are true, huh?

[West Coast Arwen]

Sam; there are a bunch of things that seperate being the victim of abuse and speaking out to warn about abuse, and being someone who has homosexual sex and goes around shaming homosexuals.
If you were nightly beating all the members of your family, and then going out and speaking loudly about how beatings were bad *but families tempted one towards beating*, so FAMILIES were immoral, I would say you carried the same sin Haggard does.
That is not what you're saying you're doing.

[West Coast Arwen]

For the record, Hugo, I am experiencing no Schadenfreude. I am experiencing deep anger.

[Lya Kahlo]

"I don't think Schadenfreude is ever justified, folks. No matter what, no matter what, no matter what. Joy in another's misfortune is, in fact, a fairly major sin."

That's if you're one to believe in sin. While I agree it is wrong to take joy in someone else's misfortune, in this case I can see how some can and would make an exception. This is a pig who preached hate, who profitted from preaching hate and all the while he was doing just as he pleased behind closed doors. Like Arwen, I am angered by this hypocritical pig, not happy at his outing.

It is his wife and children that deserve your (an our) empathy. He deserves exactly what he's gotten - to lose his cushy job preaching hate.

[labyrus]

I'm withy Lya Kahlo on this one. I suppose sympathy is implicitly good, but I'll save mine for people less vile than this man. You're a better man than I, perhaps, Hugo, because I have no sympathy for this monstrous bigot whatsoever.

[catty]

WC Arwen and lya has expressed what I wanted to say.

I'll save my sympathies for this man when he comes around from his mistakes and stops vilifying gay folks. Until then, I'll have sympathies for his wife and kids for having to go through this in a public arena.

[SamChevre]

Arwen--just to make sure you got it--I've definitely suffered abuse; my point was that I've also perpetrated abuse--and that makes me more, not less, likely to warn against it.

And I think, actually, that I'd come close even to your second scenario. Having seen just how much damage uncontrolled anger can cause in a family, I'd be VERY likely to tell someone with problems with lack of control when angry that, until their behaviour when angry is under control, they should avoid getting married and having children; and I think that I would be justified in saying that EVEN IF I were still, myself, angry and abusive. (Hugo sees grace as deliverance from addiction; I see grace as deliverance from fury.)

[catty]

"Our church’s overseers have required me to submit to the oversight of Dr. James Dobson, Pastor Jack Hayford, and Pastor Tommy Barnett. Those men will perform a thorough analysis of my mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical life. They will guide me through a program with the goal of healing and restoration for my life, my marriage, and my family."

Gag me with a spoon. Dang, Ted is getting *help* from Dobson? Let's hope he can pray away the gay. *snort* I totally agree with the Pandagon article on Ted.

I've been around addicts all my life. Thank god I just don't have it in me to become an addict, because I'll be a poster-child. I can't stand former addicts that develop a condescending attitude towards addicts and ppl that helped them get over the addiction afterwards, like they're "above" them and beyond reproach now. UGH. I'm getting a similar feeling about this Ted guy.

[West Coast Arwen]

Sam; I have no doubt that Haggard should go nowhere near other homosexual men; nor should an abuser be near families until he or she has got their problems sorted out.
There is a difference between saying: "I'm not safe to be in a family because I have anger issues", and "Families are shameful, mislead, or damned to hellfire and should be legislated against, because their motives and their emotional health is suspect." Saying "I'm not great coping with my anger around children and I shouldn't be a parent" is different than saying "Children are destroying society as we know it."

If Haggard was saying, "Well, I'm struggling with my sexual identity and I don't think I'm morally comfortable with my homosexual urges, so I will *abstain* from hanging out with gorgeous young homosexual men whom I may wish to sleep with", I'd see no problem with it. If he were saying: "I hate myself because I find the dude who delivers the male super hot", I'd have no problem with it.

[West Coast Arwen]

*g*. I meant "the dude that delivers the mail."

Hee hee. Freudian homonym.

[djw]

Hugo, not to pile on, but to accuse WC Arwen and Kathy's eloquent posts of being motivated by schadenfraude is among the most uncharitable and unfortunate misreadings of your commenters I've seen from you on this blog. WC Arwent expressed anger and a withholding of forgiveness and compassion until such a time as Haggard actually comes to terms with the full extent of his wrongdoings. Her reasons are clear and eloquent. THere's really not a hint of Schadenfraude there. It's out there in the blogs and the world but your nothing your commenters said put them in that group.

[aphrael]

Hugo,

I found the comment you highlight to be the most offensive part of the entire affair; I heard "There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life" as him saying that his attraction to other men is repulsive and dark and he's been warring against it the entirety of his adult life.

The notion that same-sex attraction is "repulsive and dark" has destroyed many a gay man and woman, and it seems to me to not be something to celebrate.

[West Coast Arwen]

Thinking on it, Sam, I can only imagine we're talking past each other in that you're seeing homosexuality as being intrinsically as problematic as battery.

If Haggart et al are only seeing homosexuality through the lens of sexual, paid for or anonymous affairs with prostitutes or bathhouse partners or call lines, and aided often by drug and alcohol use, then their problem is with a particular partying and promiscuous lifestyle. If Haggart wants to warn against the pain that lifestyle causes both himself and those he loves, I would not be filled with anger at his hypocrisy.

The thing that makes me angry is the conflation. That gay life partners who have committed to one another are necessarily - due to their orientation and some people's own random projections and demons - seen as also sniffing coke off the bodies of random strangers in bathhouses. The argument that frustrates me is the idea that GBLT persons should not marry, should not have or adopt children: all because Haggart and friends frame their lives and experience in this incredibly limited view of promiscuity and excess and inability to control oneself. Come ON.

Heterosexuals who party or who cheat or who do drugs or who engage in prostitution are never construed as being representative of the dangers of heterosexuality. It's just plain STUPID, brought about by this guy's limited understanding of himself.

Or maybe he's sick. I don't know. His sickness should not be used to paint my GBLT friends and family. Period.

[Richard]

I feel so much better about myself now that I'm "out". If I do make some decision in the future to remain celibate for theological reasons, I'm *still* going to be open about the fact that I'm gay.

Living in the light is worth the risks of making yourself vulnerable. I promise.

[Hugo]

DJW, read more closely: the comment about schadenfreude was directed to KS, who copped to it directly.

As for the "dark and repulsive" part, I read that not as a reference to homosexuality but as a reference to sexual addiction. Given that Haggard hasn't clarified exactly what he meant by "dark and repulsive", and given that his behavior was secretive and addictive, my reading is as fair as any other. I never once suggested that homosexual behavior, per se, was intrinsically dark; deception and compulsivity are.

This comment thread reveals to me the sad reality of the gulf between the secular and evangelical worlds. Our mistrust of one another is so great, our antipathy so reactive, that to ascribe goodness to the other, to profess empathy, is nearly impossible. We're all guilty of this, and I am sorry for those I have hurt by seeming to ignore just how hurtful the church's excusionary theology has been. By the same token, the anger at Haggard (calling him a pig) is ugly, ugly, ugly.

It's one thing to dislike a man's politics, and another to dislike him for having them.

[Tam]

I am officially 100% not against hypocrisy. Having and voicing the right opinions is good whether you are able to live in accord with them or not, and living well is good whether you support it with your words or not.

I do personally feel sorry for Haggard. His life probably sucks right now and, really, has for some time on some level. But I'm a pretty soft and sympathetic person.

But I am glad this happened because anything that discredits his odious point of view is good news to me. I don't think to a real Christian it necessarily discredits anything - part of their whole ideology is that everyone is a sinner (hence why they don't tend to be as anti-hypocrite as others) anyway. But it discredits them to the rest of us, and that's a good thing.

[Tam]

Oh, sorry for the serial post, but it also lends credence (fairly or otherwise) to the idea that strong homophobia is just a cover-up for repressed homosexuality. That idea has the power to discredit homophobia itself as well as to suppress people who would otherwise express homophobic feelings. So I see that as a good effect of this relevation as wel.

[West Coast Arwen]

No, Hugo. I disagree again with your sense that (I) at least, am coming from a place where I can have no empathy for the evangelical. If Haggard's sin was one that hurt himself and his family; if his sexual addiction were not being writ large as political action; if there were not hundreds of GBLT men and women who are tarred with *the personal* brush of his own struggles in a political sphere, there would be NOTHING but empathy from me. I believe very much in redemption, although not within a Christian framework; and I believe there is no shame in Haggard confronting that which he has done which has hurt his family and his community.

HOWEVER, his message is *political*. And in that, no: he is not redeeming himself. He is not even seeing the problem with casting his homosexual feelings as shameful written on the families and sexualities of people whose lives have LESS THAN NOTHING to do with his own struggles.

That's not a lack of empathy. That's the *truth* that there's a hell of a lot at stake, and he and his people have had a hell of a lot of power. I am utterly supportive of any community who wishes to live by whatever tenants, however irrational they appear to me: if the Amish eschew personal computers, and one of them was in pain because they couldn't get off of your blog, I would have the utmost empathy that they were struggling with a standard they couldn't hold themselves to. I would be supportive of their choices, and sad that they were hurting. However, I would fight any legislative action led by the Amish AGAINST personal computer ownership. (Not that they'd do such a thing.)

And when people are on the line, people whose lives are unheard because of one evangelical's struggle with his own shame, then my empathy is suspended until the danger has passed and *everyone is protected*.

I can be empathetic to someone who has in the past been abusive, but I will not be nearly as empathetic if someone is actively abusing me. If I am being covered in bruises, my own safety comes first; and I would attempt to get away without violence, respecting the humanity of the abuser; but I would not be crouched in the corner empathizing about the path that led the abuser to get here. In the same way, I do not suggest that we demonize Haggard or do violence upon him: but he has come no where NEAR saying that he is filled with regret for the sins of projection he's committed on the homosexual population.