Haggard fallout

Great post from Amy Sullivan on the Ted Haggard gay sex scandal. She hits a homerun...it's not about finger-wagging on the left, even though it's tempting, given how vitriolic Haggard has been in his anger toward the gay community. Take it away, Amy:

This, however, is a scandal involving a shephard of the flock itself. If it turns out there is truth to the allegations, the story will reverberate further and longer than any of the scandals of the 1980s (Swaggart, Bakker, etc.) because it involves not just personal behavior, but an issue that conservative evangelicals have made extremely clear is one of their two top priorities. And I wonder how or if this will affect the condemnation of homosexuality in general within conservative evangelical circles. After all, we know that people's attitudes change once they learn that someone they know is gay. A lot of evangelicals know (or at least know of) Haggard. If indeed he has been involved with a gay man, that could blow a lot of evangelical minds.