False Sense of Maturity

I still despise Ted Haggard, the former mega-pastor who met his downfall after frequenting a meth dealing male prostitute, though now I also feel a little bad for him after he revealed being sexually abused as a child in two recent sermons:

Haggard said one of his father’s employees “had a sexual experience with me” when Haggard was 7, according to audio recordings of the sermons posted on the ABC News Web site.

Haggard said he later became “a conservative Republican, loving the word of God, an evangelical, born-again, spirit-filled, charismatic, all those things.

The Rev. Peter Mullen, a well known English chaplain, is in trouble for making some over the top blog posts:

Mr Mullen, 66, wrote on his blog: ‘It is time that religious believers began to recommend… discouragements of homosexual practices after the style of warnings on cigarette packets. Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS.’

Mr Mullen, who is also rector of St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, also called for all gay pride parades to be outlawed. He described them as “obscene.”

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s secular regime, Iraq has become a very dangerous place for homosexuals. The morality policy, composed of Islamic hard-liners, are literally hunting and killing any gays they can find. The London based organization Iraq LGBT estimates that over 430 gay men have been killed in Iraq since 2003.

It’s unlikely that gays will be safe in Iraq any time soon, as much of Iraqi culture see nothing wrong with killing them. In fact, homosexuality has an entirely different definition there than it does in Western countries:

Persecution of gays will stop only if Iraqis can abandon centuries-old prejudices. They would have to acknowledge that human rights don’t cover only the humans they like. Insisting that gays are just a few undesirable perverts who “should be killed”–as one Iraqi who works in journalism put it–encourages an atmosphere of impunity no matter the offense. Killing gays becomes “honorable.” And raping them is OK because it isn’t considered a homosexual act–only being penetrated or providing oral sex is.

That’s some interesting logic. An Iraqi man can rape another man and then kill him, but that doesn’t make him gay or a criminal.

 Ted Haggard has left the “spiritual restoration program” that he had been attending, and has moved back to his old home in Colorado Springs. The male escort and meth enthusiast left well ahead of the scheduled five plus years that the program of counseling and prayer was supposed to last. It’s yet to be proven if Haggard has cured his case of “the gays.”

So what will the disgraced mega pastor do now that he has cut ties with his old New Life Church? He says he will seek “secular employment” in the private sector. I bet the phones won’t be ringing off the hook with offers.