Haggard denies homosexuality, says Jesus is healing him

Haggard denies homosexuality, says Jesus is healing him
By Staff
Baptist Press

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (BP)--Having been “paralyzed by shame” since news of his involvement with a male prostitute surfaced in November, Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intense psychological treatment with an e-mail to members of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where he formerly served as pastor, Feb. 5.

“We all wanted to know why I developed such incongruity in my life. Thankfully, with the tools we gained there, along with the powerful way God has been illuminating His Word and the Holy Spirit has been convicting and healing me, we now have growing understanding which is giving me some hope for a future,” Haggard said of the treatment he and his wife received in Phoenix.

Tim Ralph, a member of the four-man board of overseers charged with guiding Haggard toward restoration, told The Denver Post that Haggard’s homosexual behavior with a male prostitute named Mike Jones was not a lifelong pattern.

“He is completely heterosexual,” Ralph, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship in Larkspur, Colo., said. “That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”

Haggard, 50, told the board that the only extramarital sexual contact he had was with Jones, and Ralph said several people close to Haggard found no contradicting evidence, The Post reported Feb. 6.

“If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly,” Ralph said. “We’re into this thing over 90 days, and it hasn’t happened.”

Ralph said Haggard continues to receive Christian counseling twice a week, and the board of overseers has advised the Haggards to relocate from Colorado Springs in order to continue the healing process. They also advised him to begin a 12-step program for sexual addiction, The Post reported.

Click here for the full story! (may need to disable pop-up blocker)