Ian thinks it may be time he re-evaluated religion.

After a lifetime of denouncing all things religious, it seems I may be due for a rethink.

Having heard rumours over several weeks to the effect that rent-boy bothering evangelical preacher Ted Haggard had been "cured" of his homosexual tendencies by the power of prayer, it struck me that further investigation was needed.

Sure enough a story in the Denver Star newspaper confirmed that after months of intensive Prayer Therapy, Haggard, once famed for his hellfire and homophobia sermons but more recently notorious for his drug habit and dalliance with a male prostitute had been confirmed as cured and was completely heterosexual again.

Bet that was the worst news his wife has heard in years.

If they can "cure" homosexuality though, these fundies must have more going for them than anybody ever thought possible. Homosexuality is not something that can be got rid of with a few shots of penicillin or a bottle of Night Nurse. What is more, it is not a disease like pneumonia nor even a psychosis like religious mania. It is more like...well, being left handed; something that is part of one’s nature. Mind you, as recently as the first half of the twentieth century doctors were still trying to cure left handedness. Being homosexual is as natural as having ginger hair. Sure, people can use hair dye or wear wigs to pretend they are not a ginge, but in their essential being they are forever ginger.

I always thought it was the same with homosexual people, and just as an aside here I’ll remind everyone it is hom-O, Greek for "the same as, not hO- mO, which is Latin for man. People whose sexual preferences are for their own gender.

Like people who dye their hair or train themselves to use the right hand, homosexual people can pretend in order to avoid feeling different. Many millions down the centuries have married, made babies with a heterosexual partner or found other ways to fit into intolerant communities.

Ted Haggard is certainly not the only one who has affected a fanatical hatred of homosexuals in order to disguise his proclivities.

But all such people are, in their nature, homosexual. Unless of course a certain individual has powerful friends who will use their one – on – one relationship with God to request divine intervention and change nature so the individual may resume a lucrative career preying in the insecurities and gullibility of vulnerable people.

It is time to get back to my reasons for thinking I might need to rethink my attitude to evangelical religion though.

At five feet six it is my nature to be on the short side of average. This lack of inches has never held me back either in career or love life and I am hardly a dwarf; taller in fact than Tom Cruise and Dennis Hopper, as tall as Mel Gibson (though he will probably try to sue me for saying so,) and Robert Redford. In other words it is not a problem. Even so, a couple of extra inches would make trouser buying a lot easier.

So I thought maybe if I joined up and gave it plenty of volume on all the "Jesus is my saviour," guff, the fundies might pray me taller?

Well it’s only a simple case of changing my essential nature after all, and what could be difficult about that? Anything is possible with God. Who knows, if the keep working on Ted Haggard they make him into a human being one day.