This is never a good sign.
Ditto on the prayers. Hopefully turns out to be a false accusation (though him stepping down already makes me wonder).
Oh, man. Thought y'all were talkin' 'bout Meryl Haggard there for a minute!
There was a Missouri Synod pastor with a mega-church. Same story.
This smells like a Foley-esque smear.
I seriously doubt this is true.
If it's true, and I'm doubtful, but if it is, he owes it to all his supporters to fight this until after the election.
No matter the cost, ANY cost.
Ugh. I just spent the last 45 minutes listening to the hosts of a local sports show talk about this. And they just didn't seem to understand how people could say that the timing of this announcement might be regarded as suspicious.
Who writes letters to their gay prostitute?
In a world when you can't trust a female prostitute to keep your confidence, I want out!!!
I would think the same tradition of confidence keeping would hold true for a male prostitute. Stinks!
Ping to follow
Another preacher fallen from the flock while going down the dirt road apparently. What next Vern??
This isn't a stretch, in my view. I think he did it. We'll see.
I wonder how they're going to try to knock Dr. Dobson out before the election.
Ugh!
This will likely have fallout in not only the homosexual issues but also in the CD 5 race since Haggard is in El Paso County.
Dirty trick? Definitely.
True? Who knows. It wouldn't be the first time a preacher took a major fall. For the sake of his family and congregation, I hope it's not true.
The accusation alone will likely affect the outcome of the election.
Anyone in church should have their eyes on Jesus, not a priest. I follow Jesus, not mere men. This won't affect anyone who has that concept right.
Prayers for his family and congretation.
the timing of this has absolutely nothing to do win the election being next week /sarc.
First off, to be clear, nothing is proven, and the Rev. Haggard should be allowed time and space to defend himself. But with that disclaimer ... it's the hypocrisy, stupid.
I know most FReepers are more hostile to homosexuals than I am, and I'm not picking that fight. As far as I'm concerned, consenting adults can do what they want in private, as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
But the real issues are these: 1) it takes a an unparalleled lack of character to spend your days decrying homosexuals and your nights trolling for guys; and B) anyone leading that kind of double-life is a blackmail target served up on a silver platter with a sprig of parsley. Why bribe someone you can blackmail? The latter is harder to detect, more certain and far cheaper.
I hate to say it, but I have a lot more respect for Barney Frank as a man than I do for Mark Foley. Frank was, for want of a better word, frank about his sexuality. Foley did his best to hide it. One is arguably immoral but honest; the other, self-righteously moral in public while being immoral in private, which is fundamentally dishonest.
Count on it: closeted gay Republicans will be outed, one by one. Those gloves are off.
When Tom Foley took over as Speaker, a Republican group put out a release titled "Tom Foley: Out of the Liberal Closet." The release listed how often Foley had agreed with Frank on key votes. Frank, who was already in the open and had little to lose, offered to dish on which Republicans were gay, and that campaign stopped hard on its heels.
The point is, allegations of freaky sex don't hit the Democrats very hard, because they don't campaign against freaky sex. As long as the Republicans oppose freaky sex, they're going to take a much tougher hit when one of their own is caught in the act. They sow what they reap.