"Completely heterosexual"

Well this IS a miracle of Biblical proportions, isn't it? According to one of the ministers overseeing Ted Haggard, the former NAE chief who resigned from New Life Ministries over charges involving a male prostitute and some crystal meth now is "completely heterosexual." (HT: Rod, who links to "The Nile").

Color me cynical about this too. I offered my intentions for Haggard before the Blessed Sacrament in one of my weekly hours, so it's obviously my duty to hope that this could be so, for his sake and his family's. But while the heart can hope, the head can only doubt. Obviously, everybody's experience of homosexuality is different, but all the known public particulars about what happened to Haggard point in the direction that homosexuality is something deep-seated in him, and that he is now kidding himself. Given these particulars, a one-month turnaround would be in the Lazarus category.

(1) The counselor used the word "completely heterosexual." In one month. Not "able to function as a husband in the marital bed" -- which would be believable. (Though he has five children; so that probably was never an issue anyway.) Not "completely repentant" -- which would be believable (personal experience talking here). No ... he said, functionally speaking, "not attracted to men at all." Apart from anything else, how would you know that objectively, short of hooking him up to something and getting out the dirty pictures ... which I doubt happened.

(2) The initial action wasn't a one-time thing, like two mechanics bonding over a Snickers bar. Nor was it a long-ago thing (puts on "American Pie" voice) "like one time, in band camp ..." But, assuming the prostitute Mike Jones was telling the truth (and there is no reason to disbelieve him; everything he's said that IS checkable has been verified), Haggard was a regular customer, who repeatedly hired him within the past couple of years, and their commercial relationship was, as they say, "fully consummated."

(3) In his initial resignation letter, he told his New Life congregants (PDF file) that "there is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all my adult life."

What I'm saying is the following: there is such a thing as transitory homosexual attraction (maybe "fascination" or "curiosity" might be better terminology). And transitory fantasies of any other kind. And such a thing as a phase from adolescence that one might leave behind as one matures, particularly if one has a loving and successful marriage. But these cases don't fit what is publicly known of Haggard, who seems to fit perfectly into the category of what the Vatican calls "a man with deep-seated homosexual tendencies."

I am only approx. 40 to Haggard's 50, but I have had some knowledge of "that" since childhood, so I think I know whereof I speak. If a 50-year-old man has had homosexual attractions all his adult life; if they are sufficiently strong that he can fully-consummate a homosexual liaison; and if this is done repeatedly and within the past year -- if all that's true, they ain't going away to nothing in a month. Noway, nohow, given these circumstances, that this went away completely in a matter of weeks.

Absent water-into-wine or parting-the-Red-Sea territory.