Jamie Kilstein is one of my very favorite comedians. He and his wife Allison Kilkenny (who I link here from time to time) run Citizen Radio, and they’re one of the few duos I’ve seen who truly bridge the gap between politics and comedy, without either side suffering. Jamie’s insanely funny, but he actually knows his stuff. And if he doesn’t, he can always ask Allison, because she’s scary smart.
ANYWAY.
The other night, Jamie performed in Chicago, and he just cold went off on Rick Warren, Ted Haggard, anti-gay fundamentalist bigots, and made one of the boldest, most raw arguments for LGBT equality I’ve ever seen.
So! You should watch it. But not at work. Unless you have headphones. Because it’s, as Jamie just said on his Facebook wall, “beyond offensive.”
So here’s your warning, in red, in case you missed the last paragraph:
DIRTY LANGUAGE IS AHEAD!!!
Okay, that all clear? Oh, and handling the objection before I get it, in the parts where Jamie’s talking about God, we should all remember that the construction is “IF God is like they say, THEN we should…”
On Jan. 3rd Evan Hurst wrote about FOX anchor Brit Hume’s on-air proselytizing, where he condemned Tiger Woods’ current faith and urged him to become a Christian. On the air Hume said:
“He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith…Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery.”
Ted Haggard shamed in gay sex/meth scandal. James Dobson gives up his throne.
These are just a few of the headlines that have come from the little town of Colorado Springs in the past couple of years.
How did this sleepy, conservative town become an evangelical Mecca?
“This Beautiful City”, a brilliantly executed and engaging play, answers this question. It takes you back to the 1980’s when Colorado Springs tried to attract new businesses through tax breaks. Focus on the Family moved from Southern California and dozens of evangelical organizations followed, transforming the town. Ted Haggard’s New Life Church was formed with the goal of religious revival in Colorado Springs.
I went to see the production in New York City’s Vinyard Theatre (108 East 15th Street) this week. I give it two thumps up (too bad I don’t have a third hand) and highly recommend it. This Beautiful City was timely, terrific and thought provoking.
To write the script, The Civilians, a New York theater group, actually ventured to Colorado Springs to interview locals. This resulted in writers Steven Cosson and Jim Lewis (music) presenting realistic, eye-opening dialogue and songs. The acting was superb and led to a boisterous standing ovation.
If you live in New York City or may be visiting, inquire with Wayne Besen about the Truth Wins Out discount.
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3. Visit the box office at 108 East 15th Street Tue 1-7pm, Wed-Sat 1-8pm, Sun 1pm-3pm and mention code JTI40TBC
*Conditions: Ticket discount valid for all performances through 3/15/09. Some blackout dates apply. Phone and online orders are subject to regular service charges. This offer is not valid on previously purchased tickets, is subject to availability and may be revoked at any time. Offer Expires 03/15/2009.
Grant Haas, reputed recipient of hushmoney from New Life Church following a sex scandal involving disgraced bisexual evangelist Ted Haggard, on Tuesday issued lurid accusations about Haggard and himself on gay author Michelangelo Signorile’s daily Sirius/XM satellite radio show.
At this time, Haas’ accusations — involving explicit sexual discussions, extreme drug abuse, and ex-gay sexual exploitation of the opposite sex — have not been independently corroborated.
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
After it was disclosed Friday that New Life Church in Colorado Springs paid money to one of Ted Haggard’s longtime same-sex partners in 2006 in exchange for his silence, Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas swiftly diverted attention from the church’s abuse of power and instead made Haggard out to be a sexual predator — even though the “other man” was in his 20s.
For better or worse, it has long been commonplace — in both conservative Christendom and Hollywood — for 40- and 50-year-old heterosexual men to seek relationships with 23-year-old women. That potential imbalance of age, privilege, and life experience is insignificant compared to the abuse of power committed by a church that, by its admission, offered untold sums of “compassionate assistance” on the condition that the sexual relationship not be disclosed — even as the church was publicly declaring in 2006 that it knew of no sex partners other than Mike Jones, Haggard’s middle-aged prostitute.
Contrary to Thomas’ claim, there is no evidence that Haggard’s newly disclosed male partner was any more “impressionable” than the average twentysomething woman. And since no illegal sexual activities appear to have happened, Thomas’s call for “proper justice” suggests that Thomas might support the re-enactment and enforcement of antigay sex laws against consenting adults.
Thomas — an opponent of self-disclosure and sexual honesty among homosexual men — expresses no objection to New Life’s attempted cover-up. Like New Life, Thomas equates “compassionate assistance” with secrecy.
For nearly a decade, Thomas and his peers at Exodus’ flagship Love In Action program have sidestepped and excused similar abuses of power against genuinely impressionable youths — perhaps because Exodus believes that secrecy and denial about sexual orientation is all the “change” that one ultimately needs.
Exodus President Alan Chambers, Exodus Executive Vice President Randy Thomas, and disgraced evangelical Ted Haggard all claim two things in common: An egocentric evangelical faith, and the notion that molestation at an early age caused them to “battle with homosexuality.”
In an article written for the religious-rightist publication WorldNetDaily, Chambers declared today that “there are some important lessons that the church can learn from Ted Haggard.” Chambers applies his own egocentrism to a disingenuous commingling of sexual orientation with sexual trauma, resulting in an article that intentionally misinforms readers about gay people’s lives, values, and religious beliefs. Readers are expected to illogically believe that, because Chambers is an amoral victim of sexual trauma, all gay people are just like (or anything like) Alan Chambers.
Chambers surmises, “For every gay activist that shouts in the parades, I’m willing to bet that there’s someone in our congregations who painfully struggles with homosexuality, but is afraid to reach out for help. I know because I was that person.”
With this statement, Chambers stereotypes participants in gay pride events, insinuating that anyone who attends a gay pride event — parents, children, choirs, country square-dancers, rollerbladers, music-lovers, and foodies — is a stereotypical, lockstep “gay activist.” He also stereotypes people who are born with a strong predisposition to same-gender sexual orientation, falsely insinuating that — because he, Thomas, and Haggard say so — real gay people share Chambers’ own lonely, lust-plagued “gay life” that is incompatible with religious faith.
Chambers praises freedom-from-sexuality as a virtue:
While there is freedom through the power of Christ….
and then Chambers complains:
… the sad truth remains that there is still something terribly wrong in many of our congregations, something that all of the marriage protection laws and constitutional amendments cannot fix. Many of our churches are not safe places for us to be vulnerable and seek help and so many continue to suffer in silence.
Exodus is not a solution to the antigay violence and unchecked fear that plague churches: It is a cause.
All too often and all too loudly, Exodus defends murder, rape, and battery as religious “free speech” rights. Randy Thomas routinely opposes all efforts to punish hate crimes in which the victim is targeted for one’s perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, going so far as to accuse antiviolence advocates of being thought police. Meanwhile, he and Chambers offer no concrete objections to existing hate-crime laws that punish violence which targets people for their religion or ethnicity. Exodus joins with religious-rightist allies in promoting paranoia and self-pity over non-existent threats to Christian free speech, while each year hundreds of people are brutally and deliberately murdered — and thousands more are beaten and injured — because of their orientation or gender variance.
Exodus promotes the myth that gay people are promiscuous, unhappy, lonely, faithless and amoral. Instead of discussing sexuality, orientation, and mental health honestly, Exodus leaders project their own unhappiness, loneliness, childhood traumas, self-denial, and past or present sexual compulsions onto the gay population. The natural result is a marginalization of gay people within their churches, as Exodus misinforms churchgoers about gay congregants’ “struggles.” Another result is family breakup, as misinformed relatives stigmatize their gay family members.
Given Exodus’ role in making churches unsafe, it’s sad but unsurprising that Chambers’ article offers no concrete solutions to readers — except to place their blind trust not only in Exodus and its psychobabble, but also in convicted (and largely impenitent) Watergate criminal Chuck Colson, who has made a second career out of scapegoating society’s bogeymen for his own sins while curtailing religious freedom and respect toward Jewish and other non-evangelical prisoners.
Like Exodus International executive vice president Randy Thomas, fallen evangelist Ted Haggard refuses to discuss his sexual orientation in a straightforward fashion.
Neither will say whether they are primarily attracted — either sexually or romantically — to the same sex. The question is not a very complicated one for people who are really homosexual — unless one’s livelihood depends upon giving answers that are contrary to reality.
Both Thomas and Haggard avoid using the “ex-gay” label to describe themselves, but they consistently preach ex-gay ideology: Both are persons with unresolved emotional disabilities who claim dubious expertise about homosexuality based on extreme personal circumstances — and who then project their own unflattering extremes of compulsion and behavior onto normal, well-adjusted, healthy persons who are predominantly or exclusively same-sex-attracted.
Both Thomas and Haggard say that they were sexually abused as children, and that this abuse confused their attractions. Both eventually resorted to self-abusive behavior — sexual compulsion and drug abuse. So when either Thomas or Haggard touts their “former homosexuality,” even briefly, their appeals for attention are perceived by many gay people to be desperate efforts to claim expertise about a subject — homosexuality — in which their experiences are atypical and self-deluded. During the 1980s, in fact, Thomas rejected the advice of his gay peers in Tennessee and instead engaged in reckless sex and drug abuse, before he eventually turned against his friends and declared his own unhealthy lifestyle — and his warped relationship with parents and relatives — to be synonymous with the homosexuality of his peers. Haggard has behaved similarly.
Two years after his extramarital sexual activities with a male prostitute were exposed, Haggard is again seeking media exposure. He says he has changed; and he says anyone can change what he calls a “learned behavior.”
In interviews with the Associated Press (Jan. 9) and with Newsweek (Jan. 19), Haggard promoted “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” an HBO documentary on Haggard’s exile from the conservative evangelical community. The documentary, which will premiere on Jan. 29, reportedly focuses upon Haggard’s resentment toward New Life and its ex-gay orthodoxy. With AP’s help, Focus on the Family has issued a pre-emptive strike against Haggard’s complaints. (Read More)
In a new documentary set to air on HBO next month, a disgraced evangelical pastor comes clean. “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” directed by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, was filmed with Haggard’s cooperation — and how.
You may recall that two years ago, Haggard stepped down from his post as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was sacked as senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs after a former male prostitute alleged that the cleric paid him for sex and used illicit substances.
I have yet to see the documentary, but published reports say that Haggard speaks onscreen, speaks about his new life. The father of five remains in his marriage for the same of his children and apparently has been living with shame. While he doesn’t speak of his sexual improprieties in detail, he does admit to “sexual immorality” and says, “I really did sin.” Haggard tells of his longtime struggle with his same-sex desires, insisting that he never claimed to be heterosexual.
“The reason I kept my personal struggle a secret is because I feared that my friends would reject me, abandon me and kick me out, and the church would exile and excommunicate me. And that happened and more,” he says in the film.
He also reveals that while he purchased methamphetamine, he never used it.
Haggard’s wife Gayle speaks in the documentary as well, and offers what perhaps is the reason behind the couple’s participation in the production: “I know to restore the honor to our children is to help restore honor to their father.”
That may be a long, hard road. Right-wing Christian leadership isn’t treating Haggard with honor, and most GLBT people probably will say that a man who worked so hard against honorable treatment for us is not worthy of anything resembling honor. Many believe he’s getting his just deserts.
After the scandal broke, the Haggard family fled Colorado for Arizona, where the former preacher confesses thta he is having a tough time making ends meet as an insurance salesperson. ”At this stage in my life, I am a loser,” Haggard says.
I suspect Haggard is a loser only if he does not come to grips with his reality and learn to embrace it. If he can emerge from this crisis a better human being, then he will deserve to be honored. He doesn’t have to abandon his family to do it: Many gay and bisexual people end up in marriages with heterosexual partners. (Exhibit A: Me.) Sometimes those marriages work; often they do not. But the real losers are the misguided ones who work to diminish others. The Religious Wrong is filled hypocrites who divide people and spead a message that does not include anything Jesus would champion — things like forgiveness, compassion, and acceptance without judgment.
Haggard could choose to re-up as a fundamentalist Christian soldier — or he could take another road, one that leads to justice for all of God’s children and could help him right the wrongs he committed. That second path leads to honor. At this point in his now-difficult life, the choice is his.
You know what? I hope he makes the honorable choice — and I wish him and his family well.
“The Trials of Ted Haggard” is scheduled to run Jan. 29 on HBO.
In a new documentary set to air on HBO next month, a disgraced evangelical pastor comes clean. “
