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Updated: Bush's Top Evangelical w/ Gay Prostitute?
AlterNet [Colorado]
November 3, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/43817/
A male prostitute says that he sold sex to the president of the National Association of Evangelicals for 3 years:
A gay man and admitted male escort claims he has had an ongoing sexual relationship with a well-known Evangelical pastor from Colorado Springs.
Mike Jones told '9 Wants to Know' Investigative Reporter Paula Woodward he has had a "sexual business" relationship with Pastor Ted Haggard for the past three years.
Haggard is the founder and senior leader of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The church has 14,000 members.
[AMERICAblog]
Haggard was named one of America's 25 most influential evangelicals by Time Magazine. He directs the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals, the largest evangelical association in America.
Haggard denies the allegations and speculates that these revelations have something to do with his support of an anti-gay marriage ballot iniative in Colorado.
As Haggard said in the documentary Jesus Camp, "If the evangelicals vote, they determine the election."
This article in Harper's notes that early in his ministry, Pastor Ted made a point of "staking out" gay bars:
He was always on the lookout for spies. At the time, Colorado Springs was a small city split between the Air Force and the New Age, and the latter, Pastor Ted believed, worked for the devil. Pastor Ted soon began upsetting the devil's plans. He staked out gay bars, inviting men to come to his church; his whole congregation pitched itself into invisible battles with demonic forces, sometimes in front of public buildings.
UPDATE: On two, totally unrelated, notes: 1. The prostitute who alleges that he had sex with Ted Haggard now claims "that he has recorded voicemails and a letter from Haggard," and 2. After "a press conference by church leaders to support Haggard was cancelled shortly before it was scheduled to take place," Haggard announced that he would step down temporarily "emphasiz[ing] that [he] did not admit any wrongdoing, but that he felt his effectiveness would be hampered by the cloud of inquiry."
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