Ted Haggard’s wife discusses fallout from scandal

By Mark Barna

The Gazette

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Gayle Haggard remains a mystery to many people.

She stayed with her husband, Ted Haggard, after his affair with a male escort became public more than three years ago. She was there when, months after his resignation as pastor of New Life Church, Haggard became a door-to-door insurance salesman, and failed miserably at it.

She has remained by his side as people puzzle over their marriage, Ted’s sexuality, and the motive behind the couple’s new ministry and message.

While some say she should divorce Ted, Gayle Haggard has chosen forgiveness, she writes in “Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour,” her memoir co-written with Angela Hunt. The book went on sale Tuesday at most bookstores.

“Everyone was pulling away from Ted,” Gayle Haggard said Tuesday. “So I wanted to pull in close. I wanted to face it. And we walked through it together.”

She is candid about how the fallout from the scandal changed her view of Christians, how New Life overseers banished the Haggards and took over the church, and how the couple’s marriage grew stronger through strife.

“Our marriage is everything I ever hoped it would be because the wall came down,” Gayle Haggard said.

The wall between them was Ted Haggard’s struggle with same-sex attraction.

Though the couple’s sex life was strong and satisfying, the relationship tended to lack intimacy, she said.

Early in their 31-year-marriage, Haggard told Gayle he struggled with same-sex attraction. But that didn’t prepare her for Ted’s confession in the late 1980s that years earlier he had had a homosexual encounter in an adult bookstore.

“The day Ted told me these things was cold and rainy, and for a while I wondered if the sun would ever shine again,” Gayle Haggard writes.

But she compartmentalized the information. “Some might say I was in denial at that point,” she writes, “but I think I was young and naive about the gravity of the problem.”

Nearly 20 years later when a Denver male escort went public about his affair with Ted, Gayle Haggard didn’t believe it at first.

Two childhood homosexual experiences confused her husband about his sexuality, she writes in her memoir. But counseling and prayer have helped him process the encounters.

Last January, Ted Haggard said on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” that he is “heterosexual with issues.”

Gayle Haggard said Tuesday those issues have been cleared up. “Ted even has trouble identifying with the fact that he struggled with (same-sex attraction) at one point in his life,” she said.

Though Ted voluntarily resigned as senior pastor of New Life in November 2006, he had hoped to remain at the church in some capacity. But New Life overseers assumed leadership and banished the Haggards from the state, according to Gayle Haggard, and told the couple’s church friends not to contact them.

“I felt I was twice damaged,” Gayle Haggard said. “First, by the knowledge that my husband had a secret life, and second, by the fact that I was cut off by my church family at the time I needed them most.”

Gayle Haggard opens up in her memoir about how her view of Christians has changed since Ted’s resignation. She was surprised after the scandal that so many Christians failed to forgive her husband or offer the family spiritual support.

“We received as much judgment from those who profess to be Christian as those who don’t,” Gayle Haggard said. “So I realized that Christians are just people. They aren’t any better than anyone else.”

On most weekends, the Haggards give paid talks at evangelical churches across the country. This is a major departure from their arrangement at New Life, where Ted was the pastor and Gayle remained behind the scenes leading the women’s ministry.

Today both minister equally, usually on the topics of forgiveness, repentance and grace.

Gayle Haggard said those themes have been forgotten in many churches.

“Somehow Christianity has become about personal righteousness rather than about accepting that we all fail and we all need a savior,” she said, “of which Ted is a perfect example.”