Haggard's Law - wikipedia article

Haggard's Law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, as it existed on March 28, 2010 (prior to its deletion on April 5, 2010)

Haggard's law is an Internet adage or epigram named after Pastor Ted Haggard that is typically stated as: "The louder and more frequent one's objections to homosexuality are, the more likely one is of being a homosexual.".

It is used as either a purely sarcastic musing that people whom are strongly objective of homosexuality are more likely to engage in homosexual activities, or in a reflection of the probability based on the numerous public scandals[1][2][3][4] of famous figures in the opposition of homosexuality and homosexual behavior.

History

The Internet adage made it's first published appearance in an article[5] written by Dennis DiClaudio of Comedy Central fame [in March 2010] and is named after American evangelical preacher Ted Haggard. It was created after and is reference to a scandal[2] involving prostitute and masseur Mike Jones who alleged that Haggard had paid Jones to engage in sex with him for three years and had also purchased and used crystal methamphetamine[6]. Although he denies using the methamphetamine or having sex with Mr. Jones, the scandal has caused many to view Pastor Haggard being extremely hypocritical about his spoken views, as he was known to publicly preach against Homosexuality[7].

Original quote by author Dennis DiClaudio:

Haggard's Law –
The likelihood of a person harboring secret desires to engage in sexual and/or romantic activities with members of the same sex is directly proportional to the frequency and volume of said person's vocalized objections to homosexuality.[5]

The "law" is more generally used to reference extreme hypocrisy in public figures whom lead the moral opposition of homosexuality and then whom come to find out engage is homosexuality or homosexual behavior.

See Also

* Homosexuality
* Ted Haggard
* Association fallacy
* Internet adage

References

1. ^ Florida State Representative Accused of Offering to Perform Oral Sex Claims Innocence, Fox News, July 27, 2007
2. ^ a b "Haggard admits 'sexual immorality', apologizes". MSNBC. 2006-11-05. Retrieved 2010-23-03.
3. ^ US anti-gay rights senator Roy Ashburn comes out, BBC News, March 8, 2010
4. ^ Former GOP Chief Pleads Guilty To Deviant Conduct, WLKY June 12, 2008
5. ^ a b DiClaudio, Dennis. "Haggard's Law," Please Add It to Your Lexicon, Comedy Central, New York, 23 March.
6. ^ "Haggard admits buying Meth". MSNBC. 2006-11-03. Retrieved 2010-23-03.
7. ^ "Pastor will shut down controversial kids camp". 2006-11-08. Retrieved 2010-03-23.

Also (added by me):
*Stereodax - Haggard’s Law, a Oct 29, 2008 blogpost declaring a coinage of the term.
*March 4, 2007 blogpost defining term as "Haggard's Law: that which a conservative is speaking against most strongly is that which the conservative will inevitably be found to be guilty of."

Analysis of Deletion (for wikigeeks only)

So, believe it or not, this article was appropriately deleted from wikipedia. The article appears to have been created sometime around March 23, 2010, based on an online article from earlier in the month trying to coin and/or cement the existence of the term. (It has been on urban dictionary since March 5, 2010.) On April 5, 2010, it was nominated for deletion, and was speedily deleted in about 30 minutes, on the grounds that it was a neologism, "with a side order of common sense." Yes, its true that not every cool term someone thinks up should immediately be the subject of a wikipedia article. Otherwise wikipedia would be filled with terms that no one uses except in some random and briefly popular blog entry. The same thing goes for articles about drinks or drinking games that people make up during some recent drunken binge, which is attempted quite often.

Haggard's Law got only about 200 views during its existence, despite the folksy truth it espouses. (See Reaction Formation and Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal? (abstract), both mentioned in the comments to the original Comedy Central article. And Latent homosexuality and The lady doth protest too much, methinks. from wikipedia.)