Theopublican confesses in gay sex scandal.

It is not been a good time for the Right-wing religionists of late. Their close association with the Bush administration has clearly harmed them. It is hard to see them as a religion when then spend so much time being an arm of the Republican Party or attempting to control the Republican Party.

And now one of the leading lights in the fundamentalist movement has stepped down in disgrace. Rev. Ted Haggard is one of those figure on the religious right who is regular in “consultation” with President Bush. He ran a 14,000 member church and was the president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Bush won’t be calling him much these days and he has stepped down from his positions.

Apparently while Rev. Haggard was leading an antigay campaign in Colorado he was paying a male escort to have sex with him on a regular basis. The escort says he didn’t know who Haggard was until recently. But supposedly for the last three to four years Haggard has been hiring his services on a monthly basis.

Haggard’s undoing was that he decided to lead a Theopublican campaign in Colorado to ban permanently any legal recognition of gay couples. I should note that no such legal recognition covers, as a couple, a john and his male prostitute. And as a leading opponent of equality for gays Haggard got interviewed on TV. And his escort friend so the ad and became enraged. He says people may not like what he does but he felt it wrong that Haggard was pushing a campaign against gays while paying for gay sex on the side. So the escort spoke out.

And now Haggard's own church says that he has admitted to some indiscretions. How many we don’t know. When the story broke Haggard originally claimed it was all false.

The real victims here are his family. He’s married and has five children. But the fundamentalists insist on pushing gays into the closet and insist they “turn straight”. And that inevitably means that men trying to stamp out there sexual orientation will marry. And when reality can’t be twisted to confirm to fundamentalist theology this means that innocent people will suffer. That is the price they have to pay in attempt to live up to unrealistic theology.

What effect his will have on Colorado politics remains to be seen. The antigay measure that Haggard was supporting is still on the ballot. And several Congressional seats there are in play as Democrats appear to be able to take those seats from the Republicans. One seat is held by Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican who has made her opposition to equality for gays a major issue. She is the author of the notorious bill to amend the US Bill of Rights to say that gays have no rights to marry. And Haggard was a supporter of hers.

First Republican Congressman Mark Foley and now Rev. Ted Haggard. When will Republicans figure out that they ought to drop their obsession with despising gay people? And I can assure you that neither the Republican Party nor the fundamentalist churches are running out of other similar scandals waiting to burst. And as long as they continue their campaigns they increase the likelihood that such scandals will be exposed.