Evangelicals were already showing some signs of sitting this one out. In the couple of months, I have received several emails from conservatives advocating staying home on election day. I do not plan to do this but even a small percentage point decline in any group’s participation could swing close elections. The Haggard scandal may further alienate evangelicals to take a holiday on election day.
Month: November 2006
Ted Haggard acknowledges some allegations
Associate Pastor, Ross Parsley says there is something to these allegations in an interview and email to the church. A voice recognition expert believes the voice on Mike Jone’s voicemail is indeed Ted Haggard. The accuser, Mike Jones, failed the first polygraph but the examiner said that fatigue and emotion may have played a role and they will try again. I am getting emails from men I have worked with in counseling who are troubled by the story. Some because it brings up their own struggles; others are saying they remember what this kind of time was like and they really feel for him and his family.
UPDATES:
1. Focus on the Family, also based in Colorado Springs, issues press release.
2. Haggard says he bought meth and received a massage from Jones.
Ted Haggard, President of NAE, accused of homosexual affair
The eyes have it: Sexual orientation and perception of invisible images
An interesting study out Monday suggests that sexual attractions direct primary appraisal (unconscious attention). What one pays attention to may relate to one’s sexual orientation. The study, “A gender- and sexual orientation-dependent spatial attentional effect of invisible images” by Jiang, Costello, Fang, Huang & He and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science masked nude images of men and women in such a way as to make them virtually invisible. They found however, that the attention of the participants were consistent with their sexual attractions. Gay men preferred to look at nude men, straight men at nude women and women were moderately focused on nude men but with a mixed response to pictures of women. I calculated effect sizes for the differences and they are huge. Sexual orientation accounts for nearly half of the variance in attention. Along with the pheromone and serotonin challenge studies, this new work adds to the idea that sexual orientation differences are quite substantial, no matter how they came to be.
I will update this as I am able.