Haggard scandal isn't about gay sex

The headline was an eye-grabber:
“Pastor Ted Haggard faces more gay sex accusations.”

But the more I delved into the January 24th Associated Press story, the more I knew it wasn’t really about “gay sex.”

It was about pastoral abuse and exploitation.

It was about a mega-church cover-up.

This was different from the 2006 story involving Colorado Springs celebrity pastor Ted Haggard and former prostitute Mike Jones. That story elicited little more than a yawn from me.

Another religious leader caught with a prostitute? Ho-hum.

Sure, Haggard showed hypocrisy to the hilt, but in the work I do, I see such an endless stream of pulpit pounders' hypocrisy that I get inured to it. So I try to concern myself with the more egregious stuff like clergy sex abuse and child molestation.

That’s why this new story about Haggard’s sexual “relationship” with a young male congregant made me flinch.

The young man was in his early 20s. So he was of legal age. But here’s the thing. The young man was part of Haggard’s congregation.

Haggard was his “pastor.” That’s not just an empty word. A pastor occupies a position of high trust toward the members of his congregation.

That’s why what Haggard did was so abusive.

It wasn’t merely “inappropriate,” as the church describes it. Rather, Haggard’s conduct was abusive of another human being.

It is inherently manipulative for a minister to use a congregant -- even an adult congregant -- for his own sexual ends. In some states, such conduct might even be a felony, just as it would if a psychologist sexually exploited a client.

What makes Haggard’s conduct all the more troubling is the fact that other church leaders were apparently willing to engage in a complicit cover-up.

Back at the time of the first Haggard scandal, a church board member reportedly said there was “no evidence that Haggard had sexual relations with anyone but Mike Jones.”

Yet, we now learn that this young man spoke with church officials in 2006, and church officials concluded there was an “overwhelming pool of evidence” to support his story.

So what did the church leaders do with that “overwhelming pool of evidence”? They hushed it up. They paid the young man some money with the condition that he not discuss the matter publicly.

And based on the Associated Press report, it appears that, even now, church officials are trying to spin their hush money payment rather than owning up to the wrong of it. They’re opting for gloss rather than transparency.

The money “wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet,” said Brady Boyd, the new senior pastor at the church Haggard founded.

Yet the money that Boyd claims wasn’t to make the man be quiet is money that nevertheless carried the requirement that the man keep quiet.

It’s a fine display of double-talk. That’s what religious leaders often do when they’re trying to defend the indefensible.

But many people outside the church will surely see the pay-off for what it really was -- morally compromised hush money.

Thank God the young man decided to talk anyway. In today’s report, we learn his name: Grant Haas. He’s the one who brought the truth to the table, not the pious church officials.

But for the courage of Grant Haas, the 10,000 members of New Life Church would still be in the dark about the pastor they so greatly trusted and the complicit church officials who covered for him.

Of course, church members may choose to remain in the dark anyway. You can put the truth in front of people, but you can’t make them open their eyes. And when the glare of truth gets too harsh, people often clench their eyes all the tighter.

Even after all this, I expect most people at New Life Church will probably go right on trusting whatever their church leaders tell them. They’ll choose the easy road of seeing this as a “gay sex” problem rather than seeing the betrayal of their pastor’s abuse and their church leaders’ cover-up.

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Ted Haggard is 52 years old, married, and has 5 children. From 2003 through 2006, he was president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an organization with about 45,000 affiliated churches.

Thanks to the Religion News Service for publishing my original version of this commentary.

See video of young Grant Haas, talking about the effect of what Haggard did and about the church's effort to silence him. In a recorded phone conversation, hear Haggard telling Haas: "It is better to forgive."

Read what Ted Haggard said on Oprah.