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Rev. Ted Haggard 'cured' from being gay

By Stone Martindale Feb 6, 2007, 16:59 GMT

Ted Haggard, another snake oil salesman-now going to be a psychologist? REUTERS/National Association of Evangelicals/Handout

Fresh from de-Gayhab, the Rev. Ted Haggard says he's not gay anymore.

Who is Ted Haggard?  Remember the disgraced preacher who liked to snort meth off the buttocks of a gay hooker? That Ted Haggard. 

Haggard, 50, resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was fired from the church he built from nothing into a 14,000-member congregation after a former male prostitute in Denver alleged a three-year cash-for-sex relationship.

Now the Rev. Ted Haggard has emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is "completely heterosexual" and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser, the gay hooker.

The Denver Post reports that Rev. Tim Ralph of Larkspur also said the four-man oversight board "strongly urged Haggard to go into secular work instead of Christian ministry if Haggard and his wife follow through on plans to earn master's degrees in psychology."

Haggard broke a three-month silence in a volley of e-mails to select members of his former church. New Life Church interim senior pastor Ross Parsley forwarded Haggard's message to the wider church body Monday.  Haggard revealed that he and his wife, Gayle, intend to leave Colorado Springs and pursue master's degrees through online courses, not a proper bricks and mortar actual college.

Missouri and Iowa are mentioned as possible relocations for the Haggards. Another oversight board member, the Rev. Mike Ware of Westminster, "said the group recommended the move out of town, and the Haggards agreed," reported the Denver Post.