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.
Scratch that. Reverse it.
Only *after* he got outed, in very similar circumstances, to wit, his paid gay "partner" spilled the beans.
Including a married father of five cavorting with a homosexual? Surely you jest...
Our societal structure is built upon marriage between a man and a woman and their children -- not consulting adults doing what they want for pleasure.