Fundy revs knew Haggard was gay
Remember Rev. Ted Haggard, the Bush spiritual adviser who confessed to buying methamphetamines and having sex with a gay prostitute in Denver? Come on, it's only been a week or two. You can't have forgotten already. Anyway, it seems that the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, the rabidly anti-gay head of the so-called Traditional Values Coalition and other equally homophobic fundamentalist leaders knew Haggard was gay for months before the story broke publicly. Dr. James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, has bailed out of the effort announced with great fanfare by a group of rightwing clergy to get the devil out of Haggard and return him to heterosexuality, claiming he just doesn't have the time.
While the Haggard story is crying out to be turned into a novel, the man who could do it best, Sinclair Lewis (author of Elmer Gantry), has unfortunately been dead for some time. But in truth, this story is so good that any hack novelist could probably do a decent job of it. Sheldon and Haggard apparently had conversation in which Haggard argued that homosexuality is genetic--a scientific fact he had publicly denied for years--and Sheldon insisted, no, no, no, it's choice.
If you're reading this in central Pennsylvania, Rev. Sheldon's son Phil lives in Lancaster, Pa., and does rightwing political consulting work for candidates who share the anti-abortion, anti-gay beliefs of he and his father. Young Sheldon is also a past president of the Pennsylvania Republican Assembly, a shadowy, conservative group that bills itself as the "Republican wing of the Republican party." Suffice it say they believe the GOP has strayed from its core beliefs.