Rev. Lou Sheldon, president of the ironically-named Traditional Values Coalition: I knew Ted Haggard was a homo! To which The Revealer replies: Sister Lou, who didn’t? Seriously — or maybe ironically — we’re fascinated by the fact that first fundamentalist exhalation of raw homophobia appears not within the movement’s own media but in The Jewish Week of New York, to which Sheldon dished thusly: “‘Ted and I had a discussion,’ explained Sheldon, who said Haggard gave him a telltale signal then: ‘He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn’t. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that.'”

Dear Reader, let us attempt to imagine what this profound theological moral discourse between two of the Christian Right’s heavy thinkers sounded like:

Pastor Ted: Homosexuality is genetic.

Rev. Lou: No way!

Pastor Ted: Yuh-huh.

Rev. Lou: Is not!

Pastor Ted: Is so!

Rev. Lou: Fag! What are you trying to cover up? [Makes a grab for Ted’s belt buckle.]

Pastor Ted: I don’t think so — Louise!

Rev. Lou: Hey, man, hate the sin, not the sinner!

Pastor Ted [weeping]: I’m sorry! I love you, brother! C’mon, let’s get high.

Well, it was probably something like that. A girl can dream, can’t she?

–Holly Berman

p.s. The Jewish Week article is actually pretty good about parsing the significance of conservative evangelicalism’s congressional losses. Even more interesting, it seems to predict a weakening of the young romance between evangelicals and American Jews, with the movement’s “support for Israel seen as replaceable.”