c. 2007 Beliefnet

(UNDATED) “Ted Haggard Is Completely Sexual.” Had that been the headline coming out of Colorado recently, it might have inspired a useful conversation. Instead, we’re hearing the usual culture war battle cries.

Haggard was removed as pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs in November amid accusations of a three-year relationship with a male prostitute. Recently, a church overseer told the Denver Post that Haggard had begun counseling and determined he is “completely heterosexual.”

The Associated Press headline _ “Haggard Now `Completely Heterosexual”’ _ suggested that Haggard’s orientation had somehow been altered in counseling; neither Haggard nor the overseer said as much. A psychologist quoted in a New York Times story insinuated that Haggard’s views on his orientation were not to be trusted because they are rooted in theology, not science.

The overseer’s comment is subject to criticism, but the responses we’ve seen are beyond critical. They are reactionary, and unfair _ not only to Haggard, but to all of us who are burdened by the paucity of our culture’s received wisdom on sexuality.

Haggard had an affair with a man. He also has a wife and five children. Those are all equal, neutral facts, but in our public conversation about Haggard, the facts of Haggard’s marriage are overwhelmed by the fact of his extramarital sex life.

According to our cultural logic on sexuality, an affair with a male prostitute is the singular clue to Haggard’s orientation; everything else is a cover-up. Why? Because the assumption is that when a straight man has gay sex, he must be gay. His orientation _ once hidden, now disclosed _ is absolute. Call it Hidden Absolute Gayness.

That logic, however, is a problem for both sides of the debate. It refuses to acknowledge the paradox of human experience. Humans act in myriad and inconsistent ways, we go astray from ourselves, we experiment with things that we wouldn’t ordinarily consider a part of who we are. A husband who sleeps with another woman is no more revealing his inner polygamist than a straight man who experiences gay sex is revealing his inner homosexual.

Many people who defer to Hidden Absolute Gayness are expressing genuine compassion for men and women who might be living a lie. But Hidden Absolute Gayness assumes that sexuality identity is concrete, and that our job is to discover that inner concrete and build our lives upon it.

Hidden Absolute Gayness makes sexuality the essence of identity. In doing so, it denies spirituality and refuses to see sexuality as just one aspect of our physical and spiritual selves.

If we could look into our innermost being, we wouldn’t find a switch flipped to “gay” or “straight.” We’d discover a question _ Who am I? _ whose answer can be found only in relationship. That’s why God, in Genesis, says, “Let us make mankind in our image.” The relational (three-personed) God creates a man who is, in turn, relational. A few verses later, God declares that it is not good for the man to be alone.

As Andy Crouch wrote a few years ago in Christianity Today magazine, “Humankind is not divided into `heterosexuals’ and `homosexuals.’ Rather, we are `sexuals,’ people created for union with another, in the image of a relational God.” People are not created to be straight or gay _ people are created to be in relationship.

Sadly, many Christians have accepted the view of people as either heterosexual or homosexual with little or nothing in between. Their view of sexuality is just like the view held by advocates of Hidden Absolute Gayness, with the additional step of believing that Gayness must be converted into Straightness. Such Christians exercise no more fairness _ no fuller grasp of the truth about sex _ than those on the other side of the cultural divide.

Can people repress desires? Sure, and such repression can be damaging. But people are damaged further by a sexuality paradigm that sees desire as the single most important clue to true identity, rather than as part of a complex of relational longing.

To put all this a different way: There is a lot about sexuality I do not understand, and neither do you. Our culture-wide conversation about sex isn’t getting us anywhere because it is mired in delusional confidence. The truth is, we know far less than we admit.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

We’re all sexual beings, and our sexuality is worked out as we inspect our lives, seek counsel, learn from others, and make an honest effort to grow into sexual expression that satisfies but also serves.

We’re sexual. It’s a truth that doesn’t have the cozy clarity of always-gay or always-straight. It doesn’t deliver pat answers, but provokes questions about the purpose and practice of sex. It is a truth rooted in mystery. But in its ambiguity, we find a better path to understanding sex.

(Patton Dodd was Ted Haggard’s book editor and is now the Protestant editor at Beliefnet.)

KRE/PH END DODD

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