Sunday, November 16, 2008

The Christianist condemnation of Ted Haggard's family

Ted Haggard recently returned to the media spotlight, apologising for sinning and claiming to be all "cured" of his sinful homosexuality. His attempt to blame the origins of all homosexual desire on sexual molestation is pretty stock-standard, but there's another comment from him that is especially interesting:
"I'm very, very sorry that I sinned," he [Haggard] said. "My wife -- all my sin and shame fell on her. People treated her as if she had fallen. And my children -- they all went through carrying my shame."

Why did people treat his wife as "fallen"? Why did they require his kids to "carry his shame"?

1 comment:

Joshua said...

See Exodus 20:5 where God says that he visits the sins of the father on the children until the 4th generation. And there are other similar verses. If they needed to they could probably make a serious theological justification for treating Haggard's family badly. Of course, there is the actual reason, that the people are self-righteous jerks but that's a separate issue...