CNN has been running a special called “What Is A Christian?” If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re missing something worth watching.

One of the featured subjects is a young man in Kentucky, Craig Gross, who started a Christian inpatient rehab group for men addicted to pornography. He lures them with a free “Pancakes & Porn” breakfast, and then he signs them up for a six-month stint in the woods with other porn-loving men. There are no computers, no televisions, and no books or mags—except for the Bible, of course. Gross founded all this with a website called XXXChurch.com, and by recruiting at porn conventions. Really. Men have to walk away from their lives and/or their families for a full six months so this anti-porn ministry can help cleanse them of their guilty pleasures. It’s like a long exorcism of sorts, all carried out with a lot of Bible study.

The show also features a Catholic psychologist who says homosexuality can be cured with the right therapy. The man has also written a book, or a guidebook of sorts, that includes a list of the telltale signs of a budding gay man; being “creative” and “artistic” are on the list. So these 40-something parents bring their openly gay teenaged son to San Diego to listen to the Catholic psychologist give a lecture. The father is hoping someone can fix his son. The kid sits through it with his folks, and then says very frankly in an interview that he doesn’t believe this guy can “cure” him. CNN gets the psychologist to talk on camera and the guy gets flustered and quits after 15 seconds. Then he throws his microphone at the crew and storms off. It’s great TV.

And for balance, I guess, they even profile a real live gay man who actually went through one of these Christian-based “treatments” to try to rid himself of his… gayness. And guess what happened? It didn’t work. It’s like six years later and he still likes men. Can you believe it?

“What Is A Christian?” doesn’t stop there. We also meet a bunch of Christian youngsters who descend on southern Florida during Spring Break to offer van rides to drunken college students in an attempt to convert them before the non-Christian kids ruin themselves by having sex. You see, all these Christian kids have taken vows of abstinence until they get married. And they feel like this is such a great idea they’re obsessed with spreading the word of their chastity. Haven’t these folks ever heard of hormones? There’s even a clip of President Bush touting abstinence as the only way for the youth of America to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. Well, yes, that would be one way. But then there’s something called reality. The Christian kids, and America’s president, don’t seem to go in much for that reality thing though. The hypocrisy (to say nothing of the absurdity) of all this is best brought by out this statistic: over 90% of youngsters who make a vow of abstinence eventually break it. That remaining 5 or 6 percent probably couldn’t get laid anyway.

Aren’t all these Christians running around doing weird stuff afraid they’re going to give Christians a bad name?