Ted Haggard..

..is so full of shite.

A small digression from AZ politics and such...
(from an Aussie paper, the Herald Sun)

Pastor admits lies and sin
Colleen Slevin

November 07, 2006 12:00am

DESCRIBING himself as a "deceiver and liar" who had given in to his dark side, one of America's top evangelical leaders yesterday confessed to sexual immorality in a letter read from the pulpit of the mega-church he founded.

The Rev Ted Haggard, the disgraced former president of the National Evangelical Association, which represents 30 million evangelical Christians, apologised to his flock.

"Because of pride, I began deceiving those I love the most because I didn't want to hurt or disappoint them," he said.
Pride? How about sheer lust you jerkwad!

"The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," he said.

He didn't take responsibility when he got caught! Shades of Foley...

Mr Haggard, 50, resigned last week as NEA president, a powerful position he used to lobby Washington against gay marriages and homosexuality. The married father of five quit after a man claimed to have had drug-fuelled homosexual trysts with him for three years.

The independent Overseer Board of the 14,000-member New Life Church, which Mr Haggard founded in the 1980s, sacked him on Saturday. The letter was read to the New Life Church by the Rev Larry Stockstill, a member of the board that fired him. Neither Mr Haggard nor his wife, Gayle, attended.

In his letter, Mr Haggard said: "The accusations made against me are not all true but enough of them are that I was appropriately removed from this church leadership position."

He did not give details on which accusations were true. Mr Haggard had acknowledged on Friday that he paid Mike Jones, of Denver, for a massage and for methamphetamine, but said he did not have sex with him and did not take the drug.

But the Overseer Board said: "Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct."

At the New Life Church, the Rev Ross Parsley has replaced Mr Haggard.

"When tragedy and crisis strikes it is at that moment that you truly decide if you are a worshipper of the most high God. And today as the worship pastor of this church I am very proud of you," Mr Parsley said.

Church member Ryan Price said: "He's reaching out and asking for forgiveness." - AP
From whom? I hope his wife! Who of course, now is being picekd on in other circles...
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I could care less whether this man is gay, blue, orange, or lime green- but I am SO sick of the evangelical right-wing hypocrisy passing from Christian in this country! The picture of a weeping "believer" tells the tale. His sin is not in the dalliance, it's in the lying, deceptive, hypocritical way in which he went about it. When will Moderates in Christianity get a grip on this out of control train called fundamentalism? I'm no longer Catholic, but be damned if I don't recognize a system in danger of damaging the people who believe in it. Faith is important to many-- it's not something to be taken lightly by men or women of devious means and piety.

People... are...human. That means they err, doubt, lose faith, cheat, sin, steal, speed, dally, and sometimes snort or shoot up. We're human-- but don't make things worse on a flawed flock by being a pious hypocrite.