BUT IT WAS JUST A MASSAGE!!!
Evangelical leader says he bought meth

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Rev. Ted Haggard said Friday he bought methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute. But the influential Christian evangelist insisted he threw the drugs away and never had sex with the man.

Haggard, who as president of the National Association of Evangelicals wielded influence on Capitol Hill and condemned both gay marriage and homosexuality, resigned on Thursday after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed that he had many drug-fueled trysts with Haggard.

On Friday, Haggard said that he received a massage from Jones after being referred to him by a Denver hotel, and that he bought meth for himself from the man.

But Haggard said he never had sex with Jones. And as for the drugs, "I was tempted, but I never used it," the 50-year-old Haggard told reporters from his vehicle while leaving his home with his wife and three of his five children.

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Uber-blogger Atrios over at Eschaton had a one word comment on this story: "Okay."

So he bought meth and got a massage, but didn't have sex. Okay. What the hell is it with these people? Obviously, Haggard did have gay sex, apparently lots of it. Nothing wrong with that. And, likewise, there's nothing wrong, morally, with addiction--I mean, it's a problem, yeah, but it doesn't make Haggard evil or anything. What bothers me, of course, is the continuing tale of insanely high levels of hypocrisy on the right wing. And I'm not saying that liberals aren't prone to hypocrisy, either, it's just that liberalism, of the non-"p.c." variety, tends to be far less judgmental in a variety of areas, seeing drug addiction as illness rather than weakness of character or as sin, and seeing gay sex as being just as legitimate as straight sex. It strikes me that there are probably countless right-wingers who are probably closeted liberals, on social issues at least, if only they'd just let themselves be...well...themselves.

I'm really starting to buy heavily into the notion that politics are much more about how people perceive themselves, about identity, and far less about issues. And that's pretty frightening if you think about it for a bit.

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