I Had to Say Something

The Art of Ted Haggard's Fall

de Mike Jones

"For almost three years, a man named "Art" came to see Mike Jones, an escort, at least once a month. With time, the relationship deepened, including sexual experimentation as well as sincere conversation. Like many of Jones' closeted clients in the clergy or the military, Art revealed his vulnerabilities as he struggled with his true desire for sexual contact and emotional involvement with a man. One day, Jones recognized Art preaching hate on a religious cable channel. He soon discovered that Art was actually the Reverend Ted Haggard, who, as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, influenced the daily lives of thirty million followers, advocating virulently against gay rights and same-sex unions, with direct access to White House policy makers. On November 1, 2006, after months of indecision, Jones made public his relationship with Ted Haggard. Within days, Haggard resigned from all his positions of power, admitting to a "sexual Immorality" that shook the evangelical world, right before Election Day 2006. Here is the disarming story of how a sexual relationship became a lightning rod that completely changed two men's lives, as well as, possibly, the history of American governance. Jones' only rules were telling the truth and not being ashamed of who he is."--Publisher description "Mike Jones’s courage and strength of conscience led him to come forward about the hypocrisy of Pastor Ted Haggard’s life, days before the 2006 midterm elections, when he revealed their three-year sexual relationship. His decision changed history. It also put a sudden end to Ted Haggard’s hypocrisy, to the very real prospect of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and to Jones’s own career as an escort and massage therapist. I Had to Say Something is the story of the sexual relationship between Jones, a Denver man who worked as an escort, and the Reverend Ted Haggard, founder and pastor of New Life Church of Colorado Springs and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals. And it is the story of other men who, like Haggard, seek tenderness in out-of-the-way places."--Dust jacket.