Haggard Admits to Gay Sex

This story took a bizarre turn when Ted Haggard responded to questions in an on-camera interview and said he didn't have sex with the male prostitute but did receive a massage and buy drugs from him. Apparently there was a moment when he hoped to stanch the blood-letting by denying engaging in gay sex but admitting a lapse in judgment about purchasing drugs, which would presumably be a more forgivable sin in his evangelical community.

But now he has admitted the truth:

Less than 24 hours after being fired from the mega-church he founded, evangelical Pastor Ted Haggard confessed to a "lifelong" sexual problem.

In a letter read to members of his New Life Church Sunday, Haggard said he is "a deceiver and a liar." Haggard apologized to his congregation in the letter and asked for their forgiveness.

"There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," Haggard said in the letter read by Pastor Larry Stockstill, a member of the board of overseers of New Life Church.

So Haggard is gay and it has been tormenting him his entire life. For this I can have compassion for him; it must have been a living hell for him in his rigid world. But what pain he has inflicted on himself, and how tragic for his wife and children, and it might have been avoided if he had had the courage to come out long ago. And what a more humane world it would be if it really didn't matter whether he was gay or straight. It doesn't matter to God. It shouldn't matter to us.