Focus on the Fundies: FOTF sheds famous anti-gay program

Focus on the Family is still having money problems and has decided to end support for its anti-gay "Love Won Out" program -- one of those "ministries" which attempt to provide "encouragement" for gay people to stop being gay and pretend to be straight. The infamous Exodus International group will be taking it over, and that's got to be a natural fit. Exodus is the "ex-gay" organization whose co-founders finally gave up and stopped the pretense and went back to being as gay as the day they were born.

technorati: Focus on the Family, Love Won Out, antigay

How Colorado Springs became the 'evangelical Vatican'

The Colorado Springs Gazette, which seems to have doubled down on its coverage of the local evangelical industry -- somewhat belatedly, but any documentary evidence is a good thing -- today publishes a piece on how Colorado Springs became the nation's center for big-box Christianism.

technorati: Colorado Springs, evangelicals

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard refuses to go away

Though he dropped off the radar for a few months after the excruciating HBO broadcast of the documentary film about him, former evangelical leader Ted Haggard is back in the news pages of the Colorado Springs Gazette, which continues to cover him the way the FBI tails former KGBers in the U.S. Included in the latest visit with the disgraced megachurch ringmaster is a scolding and eventual forgiveness by a former church member, as well as the news that Haggard and his wife are appearing on an upcoming episode of the TV show Divorce Court. Yes! And it's a two part episode, starting appropriately enough on April Fools Day. Behold!

I'll pause while you pick your jaw up off the floor.

Oh, and he's going to begin guest-preaching at Colorado Springs megachurches, billed as "a Christian businessman," a nod to his current supposed career as insurance salesman. And thus begins his real rehabilitation -- not the one he supposedly underwent soon after his outing that supposedly turned him back into a heterosexual, but the one that will inevitably return him to the only job he can do: evangelical preacher.

technorati: Ted Haggard, Colorado Springs, evangelicals

BREAKING: Dobson resigns from Focus on the Family

James Dobson, founder and head of the Focus on the Family religious education and lobbying organization, is stepping down, the Associated Press reported.

The 72-year-old Dobson, who is a psychologist by training, has been one of the most powerful religious conservatives in the U.S. for decades. His Focus on the Family organization, despite a financial downturn in recent years, is one of the most influential right-wing Christian organizations. It was a major donor to California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8, and its daily radio program is heard on hundreds of religious radio stations around the country.

However, the Proposition 8 win (after which Dobson said he was "jubilant" over the anti-gay law) may have been the group's high point. Earlier this month they lost a battle when the Colorado House passed a domestic partners health care bill. And while it was giving lavishly to the Prop. 8 battle, it continued to suffer financially, laying off 20% of its staff.

The new head of the organization is a retired Air Force general -- Colorado Springs is also home to the Air Force Academy, which has been the site of alleged proselytizing by evangelical Christians -- who is also a former executive with defense contractor Northrup Grumman.

technorati: Focus on the Family, religious right, conservatives, Republicans, Dobson

Focus on the Fundies: Skeleton springs out of Haggard's closet

The other shoe has dropped in the latest Ted Haggard scandal, as the young former congregation member of New Life Church publicly discusses how Haggard masturbated in front of him, offered him pills of some sort, and confided that "You can be a man of God and have a little bit of fun on the side."

Meanwhile, Haggard himself appeared on the Oprah show, his successor at New Life Church revealed that Haggard had several inappropriate relationships, and a Colorado Springs bail bondsman and amateur investigator is looking into the financial and legal aspects of l'affaire Haggard.

To top it all off, Haggard's wife Gayle told Oprah that he'd told her years ago that he struggled with same-sex attractions, or, as she put it, "some thoughts."

This story is truly a gift that keeps on giving.

technorati: Ted Haggard

Focus on the Fundies: Ted Haggard may have another skeleton in closet

Now that disgraced former pastor Ted Haggard is promoting an upcoming HBO documentary about his 2006 outing and firing, the folks at his former church are none too happy about it. The current head of the congregation, seemingly resentful that Haggard is back in the public eye, has revealed that a former church volunteer alleged a consensual gay affair with the one-time evangelical superstar.

The documentary, by Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of the House Speaker), premieres on HBO this coming Thursday.

A Colorado Springs religion columnist separately interviewed Pelosi and Haggard, and also uncovers an odd note. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied she ever met Haggard after the disgraced preacher said in an interview in US News and World Report that she comforted him while her daughter was shooting the film. Here's the statement from her office.

technorati: Ted Haggard, New Life Church, Colorado Springs

Focus on the Fundies: Ted Haggard promotes HBO doc

Ted Haggard appeared yesterday before the press to promote the HBO documentary about him, "The Trials of Ted Haggard." (An ironic title, by the way, since Haggard has never been charged with any crime despite admitting to buying and possessing methamphetamine.)

Among the entertaining statements and revelations made by the formerly influential Colorado Springs megachurch pastor:

• Haggard, who preached against homosexuality before being outed as gay, now thinks "sexuality is confusing and complex." Clearly, he learned that lesson the hard way.
• Haggard has softened his views on gay marriage, saying that government should fully recognize the union between any two people and that churches are wrongly fighting a "war" over the word "marriage."
• Speaking of his firing and the way he perceives he has been treated since the scandal, he says he "knows about hatred than I ever dreamed" -- a statement that epitomizes his self-pitying view. Other pitiful statements include the satisfying "At this stage in my life, I'm a loser—a first-class loser" and "It is a sad story... I made myself sad; I made everybody that loves me sad."
• The "spiritual solution" to his fall "was not enough;" he also needed "secular therapy methods."

In a separate story from the dozens covering Haggard's HBO press conference, the Colorado Springs Gazette said the current pastor of Haggard's former church has discharged him from the severance agreement, one of the terms of which was that Haggard would not discuss the scandal publicly. The generous severance package hasn't kept Haggard from saying that his firing from and subsequent treatment by New Life was the equivalent of being told "Go to hell," and complaints like that have some former supporters angry. "The fact that he's attacking the church or New Life Church, when they did so much to help him and his family, is below the belt," said H.B. London, one of the Focus on the Family pastors assigned to "rehabilitate Haggard after his firing.

technorati: Ted Haggard, HBO, documentary

It's Bad Behavior Tuesday™! -- holiday feeling edition

A guy who was on the plane that crashed in Denver on Saturday sent Twitter messages about the experience, beginning with "Holy fucking shit I wasbjust in a plane crash!" (sic) After being taken back to the airport terminal, he wrote that passengers were being held in the airline's lounge but weren't given drinks. "You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic," he complained: "boo." His username? 2drinksbehind.

The CEO of Fry's, a West Coast electronics retailer, is being accused of scamming $65 million from the company in kickbacks from suppliers.

Today's fake: The New York Times apologized yesterday after publishing a fake letter to the editor purporting to be from the mayor of Paris.

Today's hoax: Publisher Jane Daniel is now speaking openly about having published a years-long hoax in which author Mischa Defonseca claimed to have survived the Holocaust as a child by living with wolves in a forest. Daniel is speaking openly, that is, because she has just published her own book about her role in the hoax. See my previous entry on the hoax.

In Colorado Springs, this headline says it all: Man Found Outside With Pants Down May Lose Legs.

Focus on the Fundies: Give money so he can 'minister without hindrance'

For a few months I've been monitoring the ravings of a Pentacostal preacher who is madly trying to establish a nationwide "ministry" dedicated to ridding American cities of Satanic influence. I first noticed him when he made some passing comment about how the Colorado mountain tourist town of Manitou Springs is well-known as a Satanic base camp.* Since then, I've seen him move spastically around the country, from Kansas City to Detroit, attempting to gather followers.

Recently he's been begging openly for money, and a blog posting yesterday really takes the cake for shameless solicitation. Emphasis mine.

Biblically it's clear that believers live in a different economic system, and I'm convinced that the church is called to be financial forerunners -- we are called to lead the way by giving our way out of this recession.

We pray you would consider this to be fertile and good soil for your seed in 2009. In fact, we have many challenges right this very moment, and we'd like to invite you to give before the end of 2008. Your gifts are tax-deductible... Would you invest in this ministry of teaching, planting and revival? Your donation will help us as we... (m)inister in the cities of the earth without any financial hindrance. God has moved powerfully in Detroit and other places through the ministry in 2008. Due to a timely rumbling in this city, we will be ministering in Detroit 6 times (at least) in the first half of 2009 alone.

So he goes to economically devastated Detroit and invites followers to "Give our way out of this recession." And how will he use that money? To help the poor of Detroit? To retrain auto workers being thrown out of their jobs?

Your donation will help us as we... (d)evote ourselves to the time consuming yet deeply important ministries of prayer and study. It's common for full-time prayer missionaries to devote 6 hours or more to prayer each day. (And to)
Focus on our call to author prophetic materials. I've had a book burning in my spirit for over two years, yet have not had the time to start it.

Nice! He wants to spend hours of day in prayer, and the rest of the time writing a book. Me too, dude!

To top it all off, he illustrates his plea with a picture of his family. Is it a nice soft-toned picture of them wearing sweaters around a Christmas tree? No, they're all looking glumly into the camera with tape over their mouths with the word "LIFE" written on the tape. (A one-year-old baby is spared this discomfort; they stuck the LIFE label on its chest.) I guess the point is, If you don't send him money, it's the same thing as gagging him and his whole family.

If only it were so.

* cached web page

technorati: fundamentalists, Christianists, far-right, evangelicals, bipolar

Focus on the Fundies: Ted Haggard is preaching again

For some reason, disgraced, defrocked religious leaders always seem to be able to attract new or old followers by allowing the suckers to "forgive" them and thus feel virtuous. And in America, there has never been a shortage of either. Disgraced Colorado Springs megachurch leader Ted Haggard, whose outing as a meth-snorting, gay prostitute-paying hypocrite played a role in 2006's Republican election debacle, and in the disillusionment of right-wing Christians with the Republican party, is preaching again, appearing at a rural Illinois church.

Then the 50-year-old president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a symbol of the relationship between the Christian Right and the Republican Party, Haggard was outed by the male prostitute whom he had patronized and bought drugs from over several years in Colorado. His very public fall, coming just days before the 2006 election, was preceded a month earlier by the fall of Mark Foley, and marked the beginning of the end of Republican domination of electoral politics in the U.S. for several years.

Be sure to read to the end of today's story where an elder of Haggard's former church compares him to a "mouse" in his present state.

Update: Courtesy Jeff Sharlett, here's an ABC News story -- with audio excerpts from Haggard's sermon if you play the video.

technorati: Ted Haggard, Christians, televangelists

Focus on the Fundies: Dobson 'jubilant' over anti-gay election wins

Focus on the Family head James Dobson was "jubilant" over passage of gay marriage bans in Florida, California and Arizona, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported. While Dobson praised the election of Barack Obama as "historic," he also said he was concerned that Obama is "in favor of much of the homosexual agency" (sic -- don't know whether this is a typo in the news story or just a brain fart by the sexegenarian Dobson; he undoubtedly meant to refer to the well-known, if non-existent, homosexual agenda).

Dobson's group contributed half a million dollars to help pass California's Proposition 8, which intends to amend the state's constitution to disallow gay marriage. Pro-marriage groups sued Thursday to keep the vote from being enforced.

technorati: James Dobson, Focus on the Family, gay marriage

Focus on the Fundies: sad faces in Colorado Springs

In El Paso County, Colo. where Colorado Springs is located, votes by the Christianists still went heavily to McCain:

Also, they re-elected their Republican congressman.

technorati: Colorado Springs, election

Focus on the Fundies: Anti-abortion prop, vague fears stoke New Lifers

Salon visited New Life Church, Ted Haggard's old stomping grounds, now somewhat diminished by changing demographics and Bush fatigue. In addition to the kind of sentiments you'd expect -- one woman had "heard Obama wanted to change the flag and the symbols of the country somehow. 'He wants it to be this one big -- I don't know -- it's not America. It's going to be something else, and I don't know what it's going to be'" -- the writer found a former Bush supporter ready to vote for Obama. It's people like the last guy who are going to give Colorado to Obama this time.

Read previous posts about New Life Church.

technorati: New Life Church, Colorado Springs, election

Reporter visits New Life Church, manages not to mention Ted Haggard

On Huffington Post, a reporter visits Colorado Springs, and writes 1600 words about New Life Church without mentioning its disgraced founder Ted Haggard. How impressively fair.

Strangest thing in the story is her description of "a half-used tray of communion wine, its thimbles of juice with frayed pull-tops." They have little bitty juice containers with pull-tops for communion? Now that's déclassé.

technorati: New Life Church, Colorado Springs, Ted Haggard

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Dog Day Afternoon edition

In Fountain, Colo., an 18-year-old man tried to hire two men to kill his mother so he could cash in her bank accounts in order to finance his girlfriend's breast augmentation. The plot went forward but the incompetents hired by the youth failed even to seriously injure the woman, who alerted neighbors by setting off the car alarm using her car key thingy. This was sufficient to stun the sole attacker -- the other idiot was standing outside -- long enough for the woman to flee next door.

Today's fake: A man who stole a Dodgers baseball uniform to impersonate a player was arrested Wednesday when he walked onto the field at Dodger Stadium. A security guard "recognized him from an earlier incident," which suggests a pathetic untold story. The man is 47.

Speaking of pathetic, this headline says it all: Bass fishing catching on as high school sport. I'll bet that really attracts the chicks.

Two San Francisco vagrants are regular attendees at the many conventions and conferences in the city, scamming conference swag, free meals, and, of course, "donations." They say they've been a team for 17 years, entertaining out-of-towners with comic pleas for alms.

A police detective in the New York suburb of New Rochelle, whose wife is a famous local TV anchor, admitted he used his badge to force a teenaged girl to have sex with him -- and that it wasn't the first time. Amazingly, the thug was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and got no jail time.

The Seattle Times has a feature on Ben Huh, the master of I Can Has Cheezburger, but he didn't invent the site. He merely bought it from a Hawaii couple, Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami, "who started it as a hobby and were overwhelmed by the response." I hope they got a ton of money. The Korean-born Huh also owns Fail Blog, the article says.

Nebraska has a law that permits parents to permanently abandon a child at a hospital with no legal consequences. This week a widowed, out-of-work man dropped off his entire family, nine children between the ages of 1 and 17.

Staton said his wife died last year, shortly after delivering their youngest child. He said he quit his job because of his family responsibilities but couldn't pay rent or utilities or take care of his children. "I was with her for 17 years, and then she was gone," he said of his late wife. "What was I going to do? We raised them together. I didn't think I could do it alone. I fell apart. I couldn't take care of them."

This paragraph is also significent:

A 2007 interview with Staton's oldest daughter in Omaha North High School's student newspaper said she shouldered some of the parenting duties. Despite helping to feed her siblings, check their homework and put them to bed, the teen graduated a year early.

And got the hell out, I hope, though it doesn't say that.

Focus on the Fundies: Haggard back home, just in time for Gay Pride

Ted Haggard has left the "rehabilitation program" that was supposed to turn him into a heterosexual and has returned to Colorado Springs with a shameless appeal to former supporters:

It looks as though it will take two years for us to have adequate earning power again, so we are looking for people who will help us monthly for two years.... Between now and the end of the year, we have to find the people who want to help us transition into our future. So I am starting today to let friends like you know that we are raising money ...

The story goes on to say that Haggard is living in the same Colorado Springs mansion he lived in when running a magachurch there. And there are still five big cars in the driveway.

In an email to a "friend," Haggard admitted using drugs with male prostitute Mike Jones, whose revelations to Colorado TV stations outed him just before the 2006 election

technorati: Ted Haggard

Focus on the Fundies: Scared to death of trannies

A bill in the Colorado Senate would extends gay rights in the state, so the local Taliban are up in arms, saying giving any rights to transexuals would mean "sexual predators will be able to cross-dress and legally use restrooms designated for the opposite sex" and so on.

Focus on the Family and another group are behind this disgusting crap. They are based, of course, in the same city that's home to the Purity Ball I recently wrote about.

technorati: fundamentalists, transexuals, SB200

More on the 'Purity Ball'

I posted the link to the Colorado Springs Gazette's story yesterday, and this morning the New York Times also published a substantial piece, including a photo of the men with the swords.

Here's a local mother on what the event means to her family:

In a word....the Father-Daughter Purity Ball is about Daddy being his daughter's knight in shining armor until her earthly prince comes for her. Our daughters are beautiful and I suspect we may have occasion to meet many would-be princes who would sweep them off their feet. If their Daddy doesn't teach them to stay pure in mind, body, heart and soul....how will they know which one the Lord has chosen for them?

Egad. And Colin Morton pointed out the poor choice of words in the NYT's tagline for their article:

At the Purity Ball, fathers and daughters unite to make public pledges of sexual abstinence until marriage.

So romantic!

Focus on the Fundies: Creepy story of the month

Some fundies in Colorado Springs (where else?) stage a bizarre "Father-Daughter Purity Ball" annually -- this was the tenth annual such rite -- which judging from the photo seems to involve using a cross like a maypole. And is that a crown of thorns they're doing ring-toss with?

A twirling mass of white lace surrounded a rough wooden cross as a troupe of young women danced in a circle looking like porcelain dolls come to life.

Then Randy Wilson and Kevin Moore hoisted swords in the air and a ballroom full of 149 fathers and daughters walked beneath them toward the cross and laid white roses at its base. The swords symbolized the fathers' commitment to battle for their daughters and the roses symbolized the daughters' commitment to God to remain pure.

Then Wilson announced, "Let the ball begin."

Good Christ, what are these people on? Of course, they has a website, which contains this strange passage:

The Father Daughter Purity Ball is a memorable ceremony for fathers to sign commitments to be responsible men of integrity in all areas of purity. The commitment also includes their vow to protect their daughters in their choices for purity. The daughters silently commit to live pure lives before God through the symbol of laying down a white rose at the cross.

Yes... They live in a fantasy world where women are still chattel and cannot legally sign anything, so the men sign the documents and the girls "silently commit" to the deal.

There is something else mentioned in the story, an organization called the Abstinence Clearinghouse. I'll let you Google that for yourself, but the mind boggles. "What do they clear??" Cris asked. "A clearinghouse is a place where accounting takes place... Do they have a database of all the virgins or something?"

But the best quote from the news story is:

(The family who started the event) say most in the mainstream media see their family as a fundamentalist freak show.

You think?!

technorati: fundamentalists, Colorado Springs, celibacy

More politics

Cris and I had a talk this morning about the candidates. She thinks Clinton would have a chance to do more in office. A pragmatist, she said a political machine, such as the one Clinton is connected to, is a valuable tool. I countered by saying she may be too beholden to certain people and institutions and may have too many favors to repay. I guess it's two sides of the same coin. Yes, she would put very experienced, well-connected people in her administration. But who's to say such people wouldn't also flock to an Obama administration. "Kind of like a Camelot thing," Cris said thoughtfully.

I also don't relish the thought of the Rush Limbaughs of the world being able to gnash their teeth on the Clintons for another eight years. If Obama wins the nomination, it would at least set them back on their heels for a time. Maybe not long.

Meanwhile, if you want to see what a race to the bottom looks like, take a look at this article from the Colorado Springs Gazette, depicting the one-term incumbent COngressman and two Republican challengers in a competition to prove who is more "conservative" than the others. One man, the aptly named Crank, wants to defund Amtrak, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Dept. of Education. "Those are not things the government needs to fund," he argues, contrasting them with Kevlar vests required by soldiers. Yes, let's be a nation known by our Kevlar.

technorati: Republicans, Colorado 5th district, Obama