Gayle Haggard: Devoted or Delusional?

Watching Gayle Haggard, the devoted wife of former evangelist mega star and admitted sexual immoralist Ted Haggard, on ABC's The View this morning I couldn't help but think one thing, Man this lady's got some guts! Or as we might put it around here at WomanUp, some serious big girl panties.

There are many who might say Mrs. Haggard is more delusional that devoted. With Laura Bush as her best Facebook Celebrity Look-a-like, Gayle Haggard seems to be the perfect woman beside the man -- smart, demure when necessary, but oh so willing to give Oprah a peak into her sex life with "Pastor" Ted, who was ousted from New Life Church in 2006 after a male prostitute outed him as a homosexual and a meth addict. Today on the The View, however, Mrs. Haggard, whose hawking a new book -- Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour -- seemed everything but delusional. Actually, I'd call her revolutionary.

"I do believe that my husband is heterosexual, but I think our sexuality is complex," explained the candid Mrs. Haggard. "I don't think we need to rush to categorize anyone." She went on to say, "Our sexual life was pretty great before and it's better now."

Now I don't think I could ever be as open-minded as Gayle -- and I grew up in a house were the acronyms like LGBT, and PFLAG were just as common as PTA and PB&J. Despite all that rote memorization, if my husband of 28 years came to me and said he was "struggling" with "homosexual urges" then I'd say something really Christian like, "Well, don't let the door hit 'ya where the good lord split 'ya" and then call a lawyer. But, like I said, Gayle Haggard is something of a warrior woman in my eyes. She's better than I'd be.

When asked if by forgiving her husband his "sins" ("That's our language" she clarified) would she then be inviting him to dally with any 'ole Tom, Dick and Harry, Mrs. Haggard answered definitively, "No. I want my husband to be faithful to me." And is it so naive to believe that a man who once visited a prostidude couldn't get real with himself, right with the Lord and unwreck his marriage? Sen. David Vitter and his wife Wendy seem to be working it out fine. And Elliot and Silda Spitzer are supposedly in couples' counseling.

"I was claiming what was mine," Gayle said about choosing to stay. "This was my husband, this was my marriage and I thought it was worth fighting for." To me a statement like that is more bad-ass than it is doe-eyed. And coming from a woman who I'm sure probably never heard of the Kinsey Scale before her husband decided to test its limits, it's even more radical.

There's a huge difference between claiming to "cure homosexuality" like the delusional folks over at Exodus International, actively ignoring your partner's authentic self (Mrs. Haggard also said "a sin is anything less than God's design for us," which might include men loving other men) or choosing to believe your husband when he says "I'm a heterosexual...with issues." Gayle called the story of her marriage "an amazing story, a human story" and I'd do the same.