Ted is Cured

Ted Haggard is cured. A number of news articles have been published over the past or week or so quoting Mr. Haggard as saying that he is "completely heterosexual." In his words, he was "acting out" and his man-loving and meth-taking was not a "constant" activity.

Is Ted's activity a problem in general? Or, is Ted's activity a problem in particular? By this I mean to say that given the community of people Ted hung with, Evangelical Christians, his behavior became a problem. If he would have been an Episcopalian, this behavior (at least the man-loving) would not have been such a problem.

This fact points to the locality, or specificity, of the problem of sexuality. Sexuality, in other words, is not the problem per se, the problem is the community and how the community understands sexuality. Evangelical Christian communities can thus be seen as laying a trap for those members that struggle with their sexuality. For, in this community, there is only space for one kind of relationship--the "traditional family" with one man, one women and how many ever kids. Step outside this "traditional family" arrangement and consequences follow, as Rev. Ted and his removal from leadership attests.

Personally, I find it difficult to imagine that Ted is cured, because I'm not sure what he would be cured of. But more than him being cured, his community is in the process of being cured. How? Ted was expelled. The curing, or more precisely, the purifying occurs through the expulsion of the impurity.