Just hours before online bidding was to close on the purple massage table Mike Jones calls “the table where it all happened” with Ted Haggard, eBay removed the listing.
The online auction site sent Jones an e-mail Sunday afternoon saying the listing violated its policy for charity, an action he believes was prompted by complaints from a Delaware-based ministry called Transforming Congregations.
The ministry, on its Web site, had urged people to fax eBay about the listing. “If you contacted eBay to express your concerns or register a complaint, please contact them again and thank them for doing the right thing,” read a message on the site Monday morning.
Haggard, founder of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, is undergoing what the church calls “restoration therapy” after Jones revealed the two had a threeyear relationship. Haggard resigned from the NAE and was removed from his church post in early November after revelations of his visits with Jones, a former escort and masseur who claims Haggard paid him for sex.
Jones said he planned to give all money from the auction to Project Angel Heart, which provides services to people with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.
Bidding on the table started at $400 and reached at least $1,275 before the item was taken off the site.
“It’s just sad,” Jones said Monday morning. “I wasn’t going to make any money off of it. It was for a good cause. Who it hurts is Angel Heart. It doesn’t hurt me.”
Hani Durzy, a spokesman for eBay, said the item was pulled solely because it violated the site’s fundraising policy.
Items being sold for charity belong at eBay’s online platform called “Giving Works,” he said, and it’s possible Jones could relist the table there. EBay works with a charitable organization called Mission-Fish, which makes sure auction funds raised for charity go directly to the charity and not to the seller.
Durzy said he did not know how the violation came to the auction house’s attention.
“That would have absolutely nothing to do with why that listing was pulled,” Durzy said of the Delaware ministry.
The Rev. Karen Booth, executive director of Transforming Congregations, said in an e-mail to The Gazette that she complained to eBay.
“I am a registered eBay buyer/seller and I thought the auction promoted sleazy business ethics,” Booth wrote. “I also believed that Jones’ listing was in violation of eBay’s charity regulations, so I personally filed a complaint about that through the eBay website.”
Booth said she became aware of the eBay listing while doing online research about a “Montel” show that aired last week featuring Jones and the president of Exodus International, a ministry that promotes “freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.”
As for the table, Jones said it’s still in his Denver apartment.
from The Gazette
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