EATING THEIR YOUNG. While the talking heads make great hay out of the drubbing John Kerry has received this week at the hands of many fellow Democrats, it will be interesting to see if similar attention is paid to the utterances of religious right leaders about their former good friend and potential heir to the leadership of the religious right kingdom, Ted Haggard, who yesterday resigned the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals after a self-described male "escort" alleged, as reported here yesterday, a three-year, sex-for-money relationship with Haggard. Until yesterday, Haggard, who has temporarily stepped aside from the leadership of his 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, enjoyed a spot in the inner circle of the Bush administration's religious right advisers, participating in weekly White House phone conferences with the likes of Karl Rove, and often Bush himself. He's been a big player in the right's anti-gay activities, championing a prospective gay marriage ban on which Colorado citizens will vote next Tuesday. Yet here's how the Rev. Jerry Falwell, an early leader of the religious right, described Haggard yesterday on CNN (as quoted in the Guardian): "He doesn't really lead the (evangelical) movement ... He is the president of an association that is very loosely knit and I've never been a member of it."
--Adele M. Stan
