Perhaps because I’m not among the mighty of this world, I always root for the underdog and take a certain amount of pleasure when I see the men who are at the top of the pyramid take a tumble. Tom DeLay, Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff. Need I say more?

When these men tumble because they’ve become entangled in the web of sex and lies, particularly gay sex—and when their public persona has been stridently anti-gay—my secret smirk becomes an ear-to-ear smile. Mark Foley, Florida Congressman representing the Palm Beaches has recently led that list and now there’s a new addition in the person of the Reverend Ted Haggard.

Haggard, pastor of a 14,000 member mega-church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, which claims thirty million members, is alleged to have purchased methamphetamine and received a massage from a male prostitute in Denver. While Haggard has admitted the drug purchase, he claims he threw the meth away and never used it. Deja vu all over again—a replay of, "But I didn’t inhale." He further claims he was referred for a massage to Mike Jones, his accuser, by a Denver hotel where he stayed. According to Haggard, they never had sex.

Jones ridiculed the Haggard account claiming that he advertised himself as an escort only in gay publications and Web sites and that the idea of a hotel referring him clients was ludicrous. When Jones saw Haggard on TV in his holier-than-thou cloak of righteousness touting the Colorado initiative to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage and he recognized that this was the same man who had visited him monthly for the past three years, he became angry and went public. His actions were a reflection of his personal distress at Haggard’s hypocrisy and were neither paid for, nor approved by, any political committee.

Over the weeks and months ahead, the truth of the various allegations will seep to the surface but in the meantime Haggard has resigned his post at the National Association of Evangelicals and has been dismissed as pastor of his church by the church’s board of overseers for his "sexually immoral conduct"—which has neither been specified by the overseers nor defined by Haggard.

As I read the lurid accounts, my How the Mighty Have Fallen smile vanished when I saw a photo in the November 4th edition of the New York Times which showed Haggard leaning toward the open passenger side window of his car answering an out of sight reporter’s questions. Seated next to him was his wife, sober faced and staring straight ahead. Behind Haggard in the rear seat was one of his five children, a boy who appeared to be in his early teens and who looked shell-shocked. He too was staring straight ahead with a wide eyed look of fear and non-comprehension.

The picture brought home to me the pain and the price Haggard’s family, his friends and all of those who trusted him were paying for his indiscretions, whatever they may have been.

Perhaps, it’s my approaching antiquity or the fact that my head is covered with gray, but somehow I can no longer take pleasure in other people’s pain, even those who may rant and rave against me. It may also be because I have an acute memory of the pain I experienced coming out voluntarily, without the glare of publicity, to my own three children when they were in their late teens. I had already cleared that confessional hurdle with my wife years earlier but I remember telling my kids, "If I can’t be honest with you about something that is so central to my life and that affects our whole family, how can I ever expect you to be honest with me."

The picture of Haggard’s traumatized teen-age son has remained in my mind since I saw the picture and for the sake of his family I wish Haggard had been able to be honest with himself, and those important in his life, earlier.

The Haggard incident has left me feeling a great sadness. Why, more than three decades after Stonewall and eons of time after men first had sex with men, should what the Reverend Ted Haggard does with his prick be news at all? Why, as a society, have we not been able to embrace a level of acceptance of the fact that men and women are sexual beings and they both express and satisfy their sexual needs in a variety of ways?

Ironically, the answer to those questions lies in part with the Haggards of the world themselves. Those in the political and religious community, who assume the right to dictate morality for others, perpetuate the bigotry against gays and lesbians that in turn makes the fall of the mighty news—sad news. Haggard’s hypocrisy and dishonesty compromised his integrity, not his hormonal surges.

Another of the mighty has fallen, but I take no pleasure in the fall.