Ted Haggard is back. You remember him, right? The former influential evangelical church leader who was discovered to have a gay-sex-with-male-prostitute-and-possible-love-for-methamphetamine habit on the side and is today insisting he’s entirely heterosexual? I’ve written him an open letter. *Clears throat.*

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Dear Ted,

You’re gay, dude. Own it!

Heterosexual men do not desire sexual intercourse with other men. In the situation you find yourself, in which your evangelicalism conflicts with the person you are, only one of them can survive. This jedi mind trick by which you convince yourself that you aren’t gay will only exacerbate the internal warfare which led to your allegedly drug-fueled visits to a male prostitute, and your downfall.

Stop it! Embrace the wholeness of your sexuality in an admission of the following: You are a homosexual man. That is as valid a thing to be as the heterosexual man you’re pretending to be. You deserve inner peace. God does not demand heterosexuality, or dishonesty about not possessing it.

Imagine the joy you could bring to others who are burdened with the same lies about human sexuality that you spread to them for years as a pastor. Imagine the freedom you could share with them as you relieve the guilt they suffer for perfectly natural thoughts and feelings that they’ve been taught are evil. Life’s too short for that, Ted.

Life’s too short for that.

John Wright