Quite a few emails like this have come in, from a reader:

Jonah, I won’t hit you for a rush to judgment on Ted Haggard, but it’s funny how quickly this has run the news cycles. I’ve been a Southern Baptist for over 30 years and am currently a professor at a Christian (also SBC) liberal arts university and I’ve barely heard of the guy. He is no Rick Warren or Billy Graham and he seems to represent what Evangelicals have always feared in Pentecostals (Haggard;’s background) — too much heart — not enough head (leaving gay prostitute jokes aside). This guy has very little street cred outside of the flock — he is “inside baseball” and it seems to me his influence is highly overrated both by him and the media — for obvious reason (hubris and election bias). I think this guy has done it before and I’ll assume his guilt because of the nature of the charges. Meth and gay sex are things you work up to aren’t they’t? Who says — “I’m feeling tempted to sin, I’m gonna get me some crank and have me some anonymous gay sex with the guy that sells me the dope?” This guy has had this building.