To borrow the much used title of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western the good, the bad, and the ugly were all on display in the fall of Ted Haggard. For those who perhaps have been locked in the time capsule of mid-term election year politics, Haggard was president of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor of the 14,000 member New Life Church in Colorado.
Last week, Mike Jones, who describes himself as a homosexual, accused Haggard of paying him for sex and for methamphetamines. Jones said he was coming forward to expose Haggard as a hypocrite who preached against homosexual behavior and who supported Colorado's proposed constatutional change to define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.
Jones accused Haggard of a three year long relationsihp which included homosexual sex and drug abuse. At first, Haggard denied the charges, proclaiming his complete innocence. But later, after voice mail messages were released to the press by Jones, Haggarded admitted some of the charges true but offered no specifics.