Mike Jones: I Had to Say Something: The Art of Ted Haggard’s Fall: New York: Seven Stories Press: 2007.

Mike Jones is the former gay sex worker responsible for “Haggardgate,” the scandal that outed former fundamentalist Colorado Springs high-flier Ted Haggard. His story isn’t what one might think.

Mike drifted into sex work after high school, although he has also been a shop-owner and run a gym. He is close to his family, especially to his great-grandmother, grandmother and mum. His dad was a police officer, although his brother was a pathological bully- which may have led to Mike’s interest in bodybuilding. As a sex worker, he accepted disabled and elderly clients, even those with Alzheimers, as well as soldiers bound for the Iraqi War. As for Haggard, “Art from Kansas City” was a client for three years, during which time his fundamentalist client smoked P/crystal meth and used sex toys.

Losing his mother to cancer began to transform Mike’s life. To his horror, he discovered that “Art from Kansas City” was really, Ted Haggard, chief minister at the fundamentalist “New Life Church” in Colorado Springs. Doing some online detective work, he found that Haggard’s National Association of Evangelicals desired the passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have banned same-sex marriage across the United States. On Beliefnet, Haggard sang the praises of heterosexual marriage, while advocating sexual abstinence, self-restraint and “spirit control” for lesbians and gay men. In one newspaper article, he even compared Gay Pride to “Murderers Pride.”

Mike came to despise Haggard for his hypocrisy, but found the time to be a caring son to his bereaved, elderly father. When he read that Haggard believed “sodomy” to be a “violation of God’s law” and that fundamentalists were upset at Lawrence v Texas, the US Supreme Court decision that finally decriminalised male homosexuality altogether in the United States (2003), he was incensed. At the same time that he was having sex with Mike, Haggard was also advocating Colorado state measures that outlawed same-sex marriage and obstructed LGBT domestic partnerships. Finally, he could take no more and went to the media.

Haggard resigned, and then the New Life Church sacked him after the revelations were validated. Germany, Ireland, Australia and the BBC covered the story as well.

As for Mike, his former sex work career is now over, but the US LGBT community rallied around him, and his experiences inspired The Little Dog Laughed, now being performed at New Zealand theatres.