Cured of homosexuality?

After three weeks of "intensive counseling," the Rev. Ted Haggard, the famed Colorado and national evangelical leader who was outed by a male prostitute in Denver a few months ago, has declared that he is cured and is now "completely homosexual." Yeah, right.

The unrelenting focus of so many evangelical/fundamentalist Christian groups -- those Andrew Sullivan calls "Christianist" as a play on "Islamist" -- on homosexuality is not only mean-spirited and geared to reinforcing bigotry, it's bound to come back and bite them some day, and soon. There may be exceptions, but while the scientific evidence is not definitive yet, it seems pretty clear that homosexuality is an affinity that is more inborn than learned or chosen. In other words, if you believe in God, you pretty much have to believe that God made a certain percentage of the population that way, since homosexuality seems to have occurred in almost every culture we know about, though it might be difficult to understand the reason.

Heaven only knows how much Ted Haggard has suffered inwardly as he has tried to deny something that he is convinced (I'll stipulate sincerely to give him that much credit) is a grave sin rather than a human variation. If he thinks he is "cured" now after three weeks of counseling, he has a lot more inward suffering to come. Whether he will ever be able to come clean with himself is a good question. Let's pray for a lot more understanding and tolerance all the way around.