The revelations that the Reverend Ted Haggard tried but didn't inhale a gay prostitute came as a shock to many of the leading lights of the religious right.
Moral Majority founder and fellow Bush faith-based stalwart Jerry Falwell was driven to lie about his past partnerships with Haggard. A "heartsick" James Dobson of Focus on the Family, outer of Spongebob and Haggard's neighbor in Colorado Springs, called Thursday's charges "unconscionable" before asking "Christians everywhere to pray for Ted." And a stunned Richard Cizik, Haggard's vice president of government affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals, said simply, "Is this something I can imagine of Ted Haggard? No."
Cizik, Dobson, Falwell and others might have been substantially less surprised had they read this 1998 op-ed piece written pseudonymously under the name "Bruce Heffernan." Though not verified as the work of Haggard, the struggle of a man wrestling with the inner demons of temptation seems to bear a striking similarity to the New Life pastor's current tale of woe.
For the full text of the op-ed, click here.
NOTE: The above op-ed is of course a joke, and appeared in The Onion.