Jesus might be able to forgive an evangelical preacher who buys meth from their favorite male prostitute. But can the American public? Haggard, completely disgraced, is right now on what appears to be a mission of mercy - he just went on Oprah to promote the movie, and he'll be on Larry King Live immediately after this HBO doc airs. All this on the heels of brand-new allegations from a former church member, who claims Haggard "performed a sex act" in front of him and sent him explicit text messages. The documentary is somewhat sympathetic to Haggard - here's a quote from Trials Of Ted Haggard filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi:
The gays won't embrace him unless he says he's gay, and the Christians won't embrace him because he says he has problems with his sexuality.
Yeah. But does everyone deserve to be embraced? The problem, really, is not that Haggard's gay - so what? It's not even that he went to male hookers, or did lots of meth. That's seedy, but very forgivable. It's that he condemned these sort of behaviors as grounds for eternal damnation. It's not the heat, it's the hypocrisy.