“There’s a sucker born every minute,” said P.T. Barnum. If he were alive today, Barnum would no doubt be a fundamentalist preacher. The kind like Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A man who has been a leader in the campaign against that most evil of evils: gay marriage. A man who has a direct connection to the big cheese in the sky, not to mention the village idiot in the White House.

Too bad Mike Jones, a male prostitute who advertises in gay papers, is now saying that the Rev. Haggard hired him on a monthly basis for instructions of the “Biblical” kind. According to the allegations, Haggard also did methamphetamines to heighten his sexual experiences. Jones blew the, uh, whistle on his client after he saw him on the boob tube and realized what a hypocrite he was. “It made me angry that here’s someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex,” he told the Associated Press (AP).

Haggard, considered one of the top five evangelicals in the country, stepped down from his post immediately after Jones went public with his revelation. Two days later, an investigative committee of his 14,000-member church found “without a doubt” that Haggard had engaged in “sexually immoral conduct.” They ousted him from his leadership role.

Haggard maintains that he hired Jones for massages only (there was absolutely no sex involved), and that he bought meth but never used it. The faithful aren’t buying Haggard’s spin. They know the score: “The devil made him do it.” As one woman explained to AP, “This doesn't make what Ted accomplished here any less. The farther up you are, the more you are a target for Satan.”

Satan’s always had a field day with the evangelical crowd. Jim Bakker, husband of Tammy Faye, was caught with his designer pants down, with a church secretary. Jimmy Swaggart, televangelist extraordinaire, was into female prostitutes. Pat Robertson, who regularly condemned gambling from his pulpit, had his own race horse.

Some conservative gays will no doubt argue that Haggard’s behavior is a result of being in the closet. They’ll try and invoke sympathy for Haggard: “He was a victim of a homophobic society that still forces us to remain in hiding and blahblahblah.” I say it’s just plain old American entrepreneurism. Haggard fell into the most lucrative of professions: peddling the word of God. He had everything. A wildly popular church he built from the ground up, a picture-perfect family, and, most importantly, no financial worries for the rest of his life. Preaching the gospel is like selling real estate: you can’t lose. People will always need a nice place to live and a good dose of crap to live by. Being in the business of selling morality means having to appear as if you practice what you preach. Thus the imperative to keep the call boy and the drugs on the downlow.

Ultimately, Haggard’s is a classic tale of what someone does to make a dishonest living in America. It’s also about the gullibility of the American people. Scandal after scandal they never realize that those who make the rules are the most likely to not live by them.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical southern Italian working class queer performer, activist and writer whose writing can be read on his website: www.avicollimecca.com.