I feel sorry for people like Haggard. I really do.

[izzybeans]

I'll tell you why. I'm a straight man. I've grown up in an environment where it would have been no issue if I were attracted to men. It was not an issue in my life, and I never realized it was so divisive until I left my family behind and moved on (I found this out the same moment that i was a liberal and that there was such a thing as a republican). In that regard I was very, very naive. No longer naive, when I think of a person who has been raised and surrounded by a culture that utterly represses their sexuality I feel sympathy. I've never felt that, for I am a straight male. No one calls me a slut, a whore, or a fag for expressing myself within a consenting relationship. Imagine a person who has lived and actually performed the role of a leader of a sexually oppressive cult whose attractions ran so counter to his ideological apparatus that he could only express himself in often pathological and always hidden ways. He has done damage to many people with his actions and words. One of those people is himself.

The sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about the life of individuals (especially the stigmatized) within a "total institution" (normally limited to places like prisons, boarding schools, colleges, state hospitals, the military, etc.). These institutions are organized in ways that suppress the identity of their members, realigning their sense of self along institutionally defined lines. A man or women turns into a soldier classified into a system of ranks, a patient classified into a system of diagnoses, a prisoner classified within the legal code, or a student who becomes a number classified into a tiered system of classes, etc. In each instance these classifications cause a suppression of a reality felt by the individual, some may feel they are oppressed and have lost their true identities, especially among the ranks of prisoners, patients, and soldiers.

And yet...even within a highly oppressive social institution the human spirits finds away to express itself. Inmates find free places in which they can express themselves in a way uncontrolled by the prison, the hospital, the college, or the military. Goffman used this type of situation as a metaphor that helped explain more common experiences. Our cultural mores resemble a total institution when it comes to sexual behavior. Within fundamentalist culture this is even more true. People act surprised that hateful bigots can be unveiled as sexual hypocrites. But this should come as no surprise to anyone. The self will find its place, because people like Mr. Haggard know exactly who they are and they know the limitations placed on them by their surroundings. He was an inmate in a prison that was not his own making, but he acted the part that recreated the sort of oppressive drama that imprisoned him and others in something we call "the closet".

And so I feel sorry for folks like Haggard who have had to suppress their identities behind an institutionalized mask. You can see it in his face in all the youtube videos. He alternates between hysterical anger and confidence. He is obviously not in a place that allows him to be at peace. It is unfortunate that someone who participates in such an oppressive culture, even as its leader, can only find that free place with an under-aged prostitute. If he were allowed to be open, if he were given a chance to actually embrace his own desires (and part of that would be giving himself a chance), perhaps he could have developed a healthy relationship with somebody who could love him back. I am sorry that the only avenue of freedom he had left was under-age prostitutes.

Instead, he's a candidate for suicide watch and, depending on the state, a pedophile to boot.

Yeah, I had my laughs at this man. But there are many people out there that are in the same position as he, too afraid to pursue what they want because they are being crushed by the weight of their oppressive environment, and even worse, their own cognitive contents (e.g. belief system/ideologies). I am sort of ashamed that I've never had to feel the pressure of living a double consciousness (life inside and outside the closet), but I'm doing my best to understand.

I'm not sure what will provide a powerful enough force to change the culture so that people are never subjected to the total institution of a heterosexually dominated culture, but I am fairly certain that once the laughing is over that ridicule is not the answer.

IMHO.