Nicholas Sparks Testifies That He Resents Anti-Gay Email Leaks

Romance author Nicholas Sparks found himself in hot water earlier this summer after emails revealed him going above and beyond to try to stop students at a Christian school he co-founded from forming an LGBTQ club.

Sparks has continuously denied that his actions were discriminatory, and now, he’s claiming his words were “weaponized” against him.

The emails were obtained by The Daily Beast as part of a lawsuit Saul Benjamin, the former headmaster of Sparks’ Epiphany School of Global Studies, brought forth against the school. Benjamin claims that he was forced to resign after trying to make the school a more welcoming place for LGBTQ students, along with trying to recruit more black and non-Christian students.

In the emails, Sparks can be seen telling Benjamin nobody but him wanted sexual orientation in the school’s discrimination policy, insisting that denying students the right to form an LGBTQ club is not discrimination, and noting that a previous headmaster “handled [the issue of gay students] quietly.”

The trial began this week, and Sparks was quick to testify that he felt the leaks to the media unfairly categorized him as homophobic.

“Personally, I’m for gay marriage, gay adoption,” he said, a line he also previously pulled out in his apology for the emails.

And one of those emails showed Sparks reprimanding Benjamin for “what some perceive as an agenda that strives to make homosexuality open and accepted.”

His initial apology attempted to explain away a handful of the comments he made in his emails, but to many, the excuses were thin.

“Ironically, as a writer I should have understood the power and enduring nature of my words, but like many people sent emails off in haste under stressful and tumultuous conditions,” he wrote. “My greatest regret, however, is not my lack of deliberation, but first and foremost that I failed to be more unequivocal about my support for the students in question.”