Someone forwarded me the blog post Lessons from the Ted Haggard Story, and for the first time I heard about Ted’s Nightline comment:

“Just as the church made a horrible mistake several centuries ago, insisting that the Earth was flat when, in fact, the Earth was round, I think the church may make a major mistake in our generation saying that sexuality should be this and nothing else when, in fact, there’s a lot more diversity.”

It appears that Ted and I have a mutual concern.

However, I predict that the church’s stance on homosexuality will change, just as its stance on divorce has. Fifty years ago, a woman would suffer terribly in her marriage because she was told that divorce was not an option. I know this, because it’s part of my family history. Her fear of going to hell was greater than her fear of her husband.

Likewise, there are people who do not feel that they have an option to be anything other than heterosexual. Their fear of hell (often in the form of disappointed parents, an unkind society, or outright damnation) is greater than their fear of stifled sexuality.

And if there’s one thing that I have learned in working with people on their sexual issues, it is that although we think we can tuck our sexuality neatly away into a corner of our lives, the truth is that it permeates every moment. If we aren’t honest with who we are sexually, then we aren’t being honest with who we are.