Reports that
disgraced U.S. evangelical leader Ted Haggard, felled last
year in a gay sex scandal, had gone "straight" with the aid
of therapy may not have surprised conservative
Christians who argue that sexual orientation is a
choice. But what did surprise some who also "made the
switch" but took years to do so was the speed of the
declared transformation: three weeks.
In the eyes of
many conservative U.S. Christians, homosexuality is a
sinful lifestyle choice that can be reversed through prayer
and counsel. Gay activists say they don't choose their
sexual orientation and there is nothing sinful about
it.
"The entire
underpinning of America's antigay industry is that
homosexuality is a choice and they can never move off of
that position because if they do, everything crumbles
around them," said Matt Foreman, executive director of
the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "Haggard's
people have to say it is a slip because to say otherwise
is to admit that God creates gay people."
Haggard, former
senior pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in
Colorado Springs, Colo., was a vocal opponent of same-sex
marriage who resigned in November after a male
prostitute went public with their sexual liaisons.
Haggard also resigned as president of the influential
National Association of Evangelicals. He admitted to
unspecified "sexual immorality" after his resignation.
After undergoing
three weeks of therapy, Haggard emerged convinced that
he was not gay, the Reverend Tim Ralph, one of the
ex-preacher's spiritual overseers, was quoted as
telling the Denver Post newspaper. "He is completely
heterosexual. That is something he discovered. It was the
acting-out situations where things took place. It
wasn't a constant thing," Ralph said.
But religiously
motivated men who say they have made the journey from gay
to straight say it is a long one. "I do know that a
three-week journey is not something reflected in my
own life. ... It took me three years to change my
personal orientation," said Randy Thomas, executive
vice president of Exodus International, which seeks to put
gays on the "straight path" through biblical
inspiration.
Other religiously
motivated activists who have taken the same route
agreed it took years. "I would say that a transition would
take five to eight years--I came out of a gay
lifestyle and it was a long process," said Frank
Worthen of New Hope Ministries outside San Francisco,
which also is devoted to turning gay men straight.
James Dobson,
chairman of the influential conservative advocacy group
Focus on the Family, which has strong evangelical ties, said
shortly after Haggard's resignation that it could take
a long time to "restore" him. "This could take four or
five years," he said on CNN's Larry King Live,
explaining why he did not have time to be on Haggard's
"restoration panel."
If the reports
this week are true, Haggard "restored" himself in a
fraction of that time. (Reuters)
