US: A leading Evangelical pastor has admitted buying crystal methamphetamine from a male prostitute but says he did not use the drug and never had gay sex.
Ted Haggard resigned as president of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals on Thursday after Mike Jones, a 49-year-old former escort, said the pastor paid him a number of times for drug-fuelled sex sessions.
Rev Haggard (50) said he had bought the drug from Mr Jones, whom he had hired for a massage but insisted that he did not use the drug and that there was no sexual activity between the two.
"I bought it for myself but never used it. I was tempted, but I never used it," he said. Mr Jones claims that the pastor snorted the drug in front of him during monthly sex sessions over a two-year period. Rev Haggard, who was one of the most influential Evangelicals in the US, initially denied the accusations outright and suggested that they were politically motivated. "I've never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I'm steady with my wife, I'm faithful to my wife. So I don't know if this is election year politics . . . or what it is," he said.
After Mr Jones gave a television channel recordings of voice mail messages left by Rev Haggard, however, the pastor admitted that some of the charges were true. He stepped down as leader of his 14,000-member New Life Church pending an investigation. Mr Jones said he decided to go public with his allegations because Rev Haggard is backing a referendum in Colorado next Tuesday to ban gay marriage.
"It made me angry that here's someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex," Mr Jones said.
Mr Jones said that Rev Haggard, who is married with five children, responded to the escort's internet ad and introduced himself as Art. Mr Jones claims the two men met regularly over the next two years and that the pastor liked to use crystal methamphetamine to heighten the intensity of sex.
"Hi Mike, this is Art," one voice mail message began. "Hey, I was just calling to see if we could get any more. Either $100 or $200 supply." A second message, left a few hours later, began: "Hi Mike, this is Art, I am here in Denver and sorry that I missed you. But as I said, if you want to go ahead and get the stuff, then that would be great. And I'll get it sometime next week or the week after or whenever."
