Ted Haggard's wife says he told her "years ago" of his "struggles"

Okay, I searched, and I haven't seen this here yet. Please accept my apologies if I overlooked it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090127/ap_on_re_us/rel_haggard_s_wife/print

>Former evangelical pastor Ted Haggard's wife says she knew about his struggles with same-sex attraction for years and felt he was "winning the battle" before a scandal involving a male prostitute triggered his downfall in late 2006.

Gayle Haggard makes the remarks in an appearance with her husband on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" to air Wednesday. She said she was shocked when Haggard first told her the truth about the allegations against him.

"The first words out of my mouth were, 'Who are you?'" she said, according to a publicity release issued Tuesday by Harpo Productions.

However, Gayle Haggard also said her husband told her early in their 30-year marriage that he "struggled with some thoughts."

"I felt it was the thing that could destroy Ted if he gave in to it," she said. "So I prayed for him and I felt as though he was winning the battle."<

To say that I find the above absolutely mind-boggling is an understatement. He told her THIRTY YEARS AGO that he was attracted to men, and she thought she could pray it away?

How many hundreds of thousands of people who came through that church were shamed because Ted Haggard couldn't come to grips with his own desires?

I am just LIVID.
Julie

How much more proof is needed? This guy is mentally ill, as are his followers and all the other folks who use religious beliefs to justify insane behavior.

How dare he? How DARE he? He uses his God to twist and subvert Scripture for his own ends, not to mention what was most likely said from the pulpit about those who are gay.

I'm also sorry for his kids. His wife just pisses me off.

God.
Julie

If you marry or partner with someone, you do not cheat. Not ever. Not for any excuse. Anyone who does cheat or advocates cheating... or supports cheating, it'll make your livid reaction pale compared to how I feel every time I read some story where someone gets caught sleazing around.

I wonder if his wife might have caught a disease because he felt he had to go out and sleaze around.

Ted is slime. Period. If he couldn't have kept it in his pants he should have divorced. Or not marry or date at all. Bi, gay, straight, whatever - the core principles are the same. Infidelity is wrong, stupid, hurtful, and dangerous. And some on DU advocate it too (at least in a poll somebody once made in my honor...)

you are and hiding it and trying to change yourself by avoiding places in life where you could be tempted by those feelings. Like going to a gym where shirtless men are if you're 'fighting' gay urges. So please don't go down that road, it's not permitted to attack personally on DU about sexuality, religion, etc. and your comment does just that. If you don't believe in any religion, and it's a relative point to make, make it - just don't be hateful.

I wanna tell them, you're fighting gay urges? You're Gay! Self-hatred is so sad... I know several who live it.

I can't imagine the level of fundamentalism one has to be indoctrinated in to try to forcibly change their sexual desire. Obviously Haggard is homosexual (or bi), but he (and his wife, apparently) are determined to find some sort of non-existent cure. That has to be some insane level of self-loathing. Doesn't make me forgive the guy for being an incredible asshole though.

I just find him disgusting. Seriously. I can't imagine the shit he perpetrated from that pulpit.

We had one like him around here, too, and it's amazing to me that these guys always think they'll never be found out.

Julie

It doesn't stop me from finding Haggard disgusting. I just wonder what creates something like him. As I said, he's obviously homo or bi sexual but is so repressed by his own religious indoctrination that he considers his desire wrong. I sure wouldn't want to live like that.

I’ve heard it personally from any number of men, and Mel White in his book “Stranger at the Gate” really fleshes it out. The sense that one is “different” from an early age is accompanied closely by the certainty that nobody had better find out about it. There are enough object lessons of sissies getting beat up to know that you’d better not let it slip.

So the forms and the rituals that he sees others going through are followed to the hilt. It’s made doubly bad when they are persuaded not just that something is “wrong,” but that it can be “fixed” if only . . . well, that varies. If only I get married, if only I pray hard enough, if only I scrutinize Hustler magazine long enough, if only, if only, if only.

The desires might ebb and flow but they never go away. Thus the guilt and the shame re-double, and the futility of the fight grows larger and larger. The secret assignations, the little lies and deceptions, the second life which must never come in contact with the “main” life presented to the world at large. There’s really only two ways out: Acceptance or termination.

Who would choose this for himself? And worse, who would choose to put the woman you love through it? What’s most astonishing to me is the number of women who go through this ordeal with a gay husband, and who come to terms with it on a charitable and even amicable level. Not all women, of course, but the ones who are able to let their husbands go to be themselves and who continue to love their husband are, in my opinion, going straight (no pun intended) to Heaven.

Ted Haggard needs to allow himself to be who he is and who God created him to be. His struggle is heart-breaking and unnecessary all at once. Which makes it just that much more pathetic, in the classic sense of the word.

and I'm right back there. Again.

I'm with you -- I can't figure out how anyone could put someone they supposedly love through this. Then again, he essentially came out to her, did he not, and she insisted she could pray it away.

I'm just amazed.
Julie

She was fearful of losing the man she fell in love with, when she should have said like many have and said we need to divorce - I'm not your beard!

What a nasty man Haggard is for spewing his filth about Gay people and being one, even if it's a closeted self-hating one because he feels like less of a man or ungodly if he allows himself to like what his body says is enjoyable to him.

Thank God for places like Metropolitan Community Church!

Gayle Dear God please help Ted from getting a chubby when he thinks
of another man's ass .... smite the ass thoughts from brother Ted .....
begone ass thoughts begone .....

:rofl:

Prayer: Your way of telling god his plan is wrong.

I feel sorry for people who hate themselves and who they are. Whether they're African American, Gay, female, etc. A lif of self-loathing is truly sad.

so that he can show others that they can do it too?

Forgive me, but I don't understand your question. He is inciting other men - out, closeted, those who don't drop their pants at any opportunity to actually go out and do so?!

Somehow, that doesn't sound like what he's advocating...

He probably has no morals and is a psychopath; totally apathetic toward his wife and thinks it's okay to solicit sex with strangers (and praying to not get a disease). I'd pray too; his spouse doesn't deserve any STDs, much less his cavalier mannerisms when going out to play.

Ted, listen up. Bi-, Gay-, Queer-, Curious-, or whatever suffix you choose, this is quite simple:

When you marry or partner, it is a serious invocation. You do NOT cheat. Not EVER. There is NO excuse to justify it.

I know some people do and advocate infidelity too. I hope those self-righteous cretins get every disease in the book as a result.

And there are straights, gays, bis, younameits that do cheat and try to find a way to rationalize it.

Of course, people open about what they want are name-called and mocked too. Honesty never pays either.

This is the world.