The Trials of Ted Haggard (2009)
Directed by Alexandra Pelosi
HBO Documentary Films
45 minutes

In San Jose, California, the Rev. Sky Anderson lives as a heterosexual married man. He has raised five children. Long ago, Rev. Sky was a lesbian. Soon after his transition around three decades ago, Anderson became one of the first, if not the very first, transgender men ordained as a pastor. Rev. Sky, now nearly 70 years old, preaches as he has for years, at MCC San Jose. The love between him and his community runs deep and is mutual.

After seeing Alexandra Pelosi’s stunning new documentary The Trials of Ted Haggard, one can only hope that the disgraced preacher will look to Rev. Sky as a role model, and be who he truly is.

There’s a word for people like Ted Haggard: bisexual. He genuinely loves his wife, and he’s sexually attracted to her. But he’s also attracted to men. The B in LGBT applies to people like Haggard.

When it was revealed that Pastor Haggard, a personal friend and advisor to former Pres. Bush, had engaged in sex acts with a male escort, he was banished from the mega-church he had founded, and was barred by the church from preaching and from living in the State of Colorado. (Did anyone ever question the legality of the latter?)

Filmmaker Pelosi (daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) presents a deeply disturbing portrait of a sad,  conflicted, browbeaten man whose life stands as a  testament to the cruelty of the ex-gay movement.
Pelosi follows Haggard and his family after their “banishment”, as he struggles to find a job so he can feed his family.

As he sits before Pelosi’s camera, Haggard says that the “revelation” of his  having been cured of his “homosexual tendencies” in “Jesus camp” were not made by him, but by Elders at the New Life Church in Colorado. The press fallout from that story made Haggard a national laughing stock, and rendered him virtually unemployable. When the money runs out, he asks for financial help from “Christians” so he can care for his family.

“Christians” respond with “You’re disgusting. Get a job, loser.” Pelosi actually shows these emails, followed by brief on camera interviews with cold, uncaring judgmental followers of Christ.

Throughout it all, the Haggard family stays together. Haggard and his wife Gayle read the Bible together. Sometimes they try to forgive the church who abandoned them — but sometimes the hurt and bitterness comes through.

Haggard now speaks openly of his attraction to men, but falls short of admitting that he’s gay or bisexual.
Sadly, he remains afraid to speak his full truth.

Mike Jones, the gay escort who uncovered Haggard’s secrets, is seen on a book tour. He speaks eloquently on how LGBTs have been victimized by the hate of right-wing preachers. He mentions Haggard, along with several others, in this context.

I beg to differ. Far too many of us have indeed been hurt and victimized by fundamentalist Christianity and in particular by the cruelties of the ex-gay movement. After seeing Pelosi’s film, I would name Ted Haggard as one of those victims.

The Trials of Ted Haggard is brilliantly executed. It’s profoundly tragic to see the broken man Haggard has become. The former preacher stands as a testament to what the ex-gay movement, and fundamentalist churches in general, does to those who fail to toe the party line.

I would therefore call upon Haggard to look to Rev. Sky Anderson as an example of what his life could be.

Live your life as who you are Ted, an openly bisexual man who loves his wife but enjoys the “company” of men. Join MCC, where you can preach the Gospel in a manner that Christ would approve of: with love and tolerance toward all.
In doing so, you can live with dignity and help bring down the ex-gay movement.

The Trials of Ted Haggard will air on the following dates in February:
HBO:
Feb. 1st, 4th, 10th & 20th
HBO 2:
Feb. 3rd, 8th, 12th and 23rd
Due to differing satellite feeds for various time zones, check local listings for actual times.

David Alex Nahmod lives in San Francisco, where he does film/DVD reviews & celebrity interviews for a variety of publications. Visit him at: DavidsOpenForum.Blogspot.com

The following is a beautiful poem written by Liberty University student Bryan Rice for TWO. For those who don’t know, Liberty U. is the school that the late Rev. Jerry Falwell had founded.

Truth Wins Out

The truth is wrath, my dear friends
For all the world to see.
Tis hate you teach, you preach, you fools
In unjust bigotry.

Your boasting — full of untruth
Of vain hypocrisy
You pride your nature above mine
You fear of me to — be.

Truth wins out, and time will tell
On the morn of eternity
The hate you love — like all things else
Is simple irony.

Similar to U.S. ex-gay poster boy Christopher Delaney, the Italian songwriter Povia believes that homosexuality is little more than a phase that anyone can overcome:

“[I] had a gay phase, it lasted seven months and then I got over it.”

Povia, a headliner for the upcoming Sanremo Music Festival, has raised the concern of Italian gay equality group Arcigay because he penned a song, Luca Was Gay, about an ex-gay man.

Pinknews says the song implies homosexuals can be “converted” to heterosexuality.

Aurelio Mancuso of Arcigay told Pinknews that Povia also said he has two friends that he has “converted” to being straight.

According to Pinknews:

Two years ago Povia won the Sanremo festival with a song about marriage, and the Vatican has been accused of overtly interfering with the event.

Mancuso believes that Luca Was Gay refers to Luca Tolve, who says he was “cured” of his homosexuality at the hands of controversial Catholic American psychologist Joseph Nicolosi.

A Facebook protest has accumulated more than 16,000 members since its launch in mid-January. It seeks to pressure festival organisers to remove Povia from the lineup.

Chris Delaney, ex-gay activist and poster boy for P-FOX billboards, admitted last month to the Chattanooga Times Free Press that, as a “gay” man, he sought male affirmation — not sex.

The apparent fact that he did not experience a lifelong, predominant, and unvarying sexual attraction to men — and that he wasted his “gay” years in bars instead of pursuing constructive relationships and hobbies — hasn’t stopped Delaney from boasting for 12 years that he achieved freedom from homosexuality.

His claim is ironic. If anything, he is more deeply addicted to the subject than when he claimed to be gay.

For most of this decade, his picture has appeared on billboards to aid P-FOX in its ongoing campaign to divide families and blame parents for their children’s predominant and unchanging same-sex attraction.

In November, Delaney joined other ex-gay activists and antigay church leaders to strategize against equality and freedom in Tennessee.

And last week, Delaney revealed to OneNewsNow that he is willing to distort science and smear researchers who have discovered signs of a naturally occurring, biological predisposition to same-gender attraction. (Read More)

Tennessee businessman Mark Siedlecki tells the Chattanooga Pulse about his ordeal in Alabama and British ex-gay “deprogramming” programs:

“The Christian church I was raised in taught me I was going to hell [for being gay]. I did not want to throw away my Christian beliefs, but I had to be at peace with myself.”

But Siedlecki had seen the director of his Montgomery “reparative therapy” group at an Atlanta gay bar “dancing with men all over the floor.”

And his experience in England, which he describes as “deprogramming,” did not work. “I never changed in my attraction to men,” he says. He was genuinely committed to trying, he says, and had decided, “If God requires me to be celibate, I am prepared to do that.” Yet when the principal of the program told him, “Mark, you need to move back to Chattanooga, find the nearest woman available, settle down, have kids and be happy,” he was repelled at the hypocrisy. “Marrying a woman for ‘cover’ is not Christian-like,” he says. During the next couple of years, he realized his “life was empty,” he says. “I had given it my all. I had discussions with other people and [reparative therapy] didn’t work for them either.”

(Read More)

Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org

TWO Calls Plagiarizer A Perfect Fit To Serve As Focus on the Family’s Top DC Lobbyist

Rove Protégé, Tim Goeglein, Will Now Spin Fiction For Focus, Says TWO

NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out (TWO) today called Tim Goeglein a perfect hire to be the lead Washington lobbyist for Focus on the Family. He resigned from the Bush White House on Feb. 29, 2008, after ex-Fort Wayne News-Sentinel columnist Nancy Nall discovered that Goeglein, while he wrote guest columns for the newspaper, had plagiarized 19 of 38 columns. According to the Colorado Independent, he had used the works of such luminaries as the Dartmouth Review, Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein and the Pope without credit.

A Rove protégé, Goeglein worked in the Bush White House in 2001 as chief liaison to socially conservative religious groups. The New York Times says that Goeglein was influential in decisions on a range of questions important to that constituency, including stem cell research, abortion and faith-based initiatives.

“Instead of hiring a writer with a Pulitzer Prize, Focus on the Family hired one who plagiarized, which reveals the organization’s true character,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Goeglein seems well qualified to work for an organization known for distorting research and confusing fact with fiction. Already the ‘Master of Misquote,’ Goeglein won’t need on-the-job training.” (Read More)

CitizenLink, Focus on the Family’s political-action newsletter, ominously declared yesterday that “‘No Name-Calling Week’ Has a Hidden Agenda.”

Starting today, students throughout the nation are being encouraged to participate in “No-Name Calling Week.” But what may seem like a good idea is nothing more than a plug for the goals of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

According to Focus, groups that prevent verbal harassment and defamation have an “adult agenda” that has no legitimate place in grades 5 through 9. In particular, Focus is angry that students are challenged to confront the inhumanity and dishonesty of being forced into a “closet” about one’s sexual orientation.

Focus claims, “All students should enjoy a safe environment,” but Focus opposes any lessons that would actually help youths understand why their name-calling is rooted in falsehoods and why sexual dishonesty and denial are unhealthy.

Focus opposes sexual honesty and the refutation of stereotypes, because sexual dishonesty is the central premise of ex-gay activism — and because stereotypes form the unfortunate foundation of the organization’s outreach to antigay parents, teachers, and pastors.

In its CitizenLink political-action newsletter yesterday, Focus on the Family laughably characterized President Barack Obama as a homosexual activist — and then criticized Obama for denying ex-gay political activists access to federal “faith-based” handouts:

Although Obama has pledged allegiance to the gay and “transgender” agenda, he refuses to support those who are dealing with unwanted same-sex attractions.

His Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will not provide funding to faith-based organizations if they are working to help people overcome unwanted homosexuality.

Equality advocates promote the values of education, fitness, and self-reliance; they don’t seek “faith-based” handouts from taxpayers, and neither should those ex-gay political activists who promote sexual dishonesty, denial, compulsion, depression, and sectarian religious beliefs.

It was no secret that Pope Benedict XVI was far to the right of most Catholics. But, he keeps sprinting to the far fringes of decency and common sense. His latest misstep came this weekend when he revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops from the far right order, St. Pius X Society.

One of the bishops the Pope is embracing, Richard Williamson, is a conspiratorial holocaust revisionist who claims the extermination of six million Jews was a hoax. This is a shame, because in recent years, the Roman Catholic Church had taken steps to heal wounds caused by centuries of anti-Semitism.

I think it is important to note that when a church group is rabidly anti-gay, they are usually intolerant of other groups, as well. These actions by the Pope confirm this point.

If there is a silver lining, it is that it is getting harder to take this church seriously, as the Pope is working overtime to sever its ties from reality and the modern world.