How much do you have to hate yourself?

How much do you have to hate what you are in order to not just live as heavily closeted as Ted Haggard has, but to build such an elaborate fortress around your own psyche? This is a man who founded a church in his basement and grew it, and his reputation, over the course of twenty years, into a leading voice in the political/evangelical movement. Cloaked in the warm embrace of religion, this is a guy who tried to cover up his own nature by trying to get others to do the same.

The apparent fall of Ted Haggard (and this news video featuring an interview with voice analyst Rich Sanders, who handled the Oklahoma City bombing and Columbine cases, seems to bolster the claims made by prostitute Mike Jones) should, if there's any justice in the world, finally pull the curtain away from the self-righteous homophobes and sexophobes who populate the more vocal corners of the Religious Right -- and the politicians who service them.

Now we know why these people think allowing gay marriage "threatens" straight marriage. I've been married for 20 years, and my gay friends have had no effect at all. No one has tried to "recruit" me into homosexuality, no one has exhorted me to leave my marriage and live with a woman instead. So I've been left scratching my head at how they make this connection.

Now I know.

It's because if gay families are mainstreamed out where closeted gays like Ted Haggard can see them, it's possible that not even Jesus can save them from the ever-present temptation of what this glimpse of what could be if they were just honest with themselves would represent. For people like Ted Haggard, uncloseted gays DO threaten his marriage. Making statewide policy around such conflicted and self-loathing individuals is not only unjust, but also futile.

We're seeing something truly astonishing in these days leading up to the midterm election. The Republican right and its allies in the Christofascist Zombie Brigade have been able to keep a stranglehold on power partly by appealing to so-called "values voters" -- those people looking for scapegoats to explain why their kids just won't listen. Feminists, gays, MySpace, Bill Clinton -- all culprits in what they see as the downfall of American morality.

I don't know that most Americans regard our species as inherently evil -- an assumption on which Christianity as practiced today is based. The idea that man is basically a wild beast that must be tamed through organized religion is the territory of those who really are sociopaths, or in some other way so warped that THEY are unable to make the right decisions during those forks in the road that appear through life.

There are plenty of us who ARE able to distinguish between right and wrong, and make shoices based on what's the right thing to do, rather than what our impulses tell us. And those choices aren't just a question of sex vs. chastity. There are plenty of people who slept around and took drugs in their youth and then settled down into marriages of long duration, took care of themselves and their families, and served their communities. It seems to be those who refused to allow themselves to sow any kind of wild oats in their youth because of the strictures of religion who are now the ones who choke their mistresses, beat their wives, take bribes, patronize prostitutes,and exhort others about sin in the pulpit on Sundays -- or, run for office as Republicans.

Lately, even Barack Obama has made the mistake of saying that these are people the Democrats should appeal to through a greater emphasis on "faith". Note to Mr. Obama: These are people who are never going to vote for you -- not because you're black, but because you represent people who represent the apple in the Garden of Eden to them -- the forbidden fruit of which they would love to partake -- if only they didn't have so much invested in living a lie.