Tom Arnold is Ted Haggard!

And the winner of the “Law & Order” spin-off competition to mold the sordid Ted Haggard saga of a homophobic evangelist in the feverish grip of the manlove that dare not speak its name into a half-baked drama goes to – drum roll, please – and we have an upset! The winner is “Law & Order: Criminal Intent!”

(My money was on “Special Victims Unit.”)

This week, Vincent D’Onofrio wrests himself from the rarefied demons that keep him from maintaining the same ruthless schedule that every other actor in prime-time television manages to elude, in order to investigate the murder of a homophobic evangelist who turns out to be not entirely homophoblic – spiritually, maybe, but not in body. Tom Arnold guest-stars as the quite literally monikered Calvin Riggins (Calvinist? rigorous?), whose wife turns up dead after a melee at a debate between him and a scientist arguing against God’s existence.

Seems Cal’s “rent boy” – the show’s term – handed Cal’s wife an incriminating DVD minutes before the tragedy, adding of Cal, “He likes crystal meth” – in case anyone not be able to pick up on who the “fictional” episode is about – “and, in particular, ‘booty bumps.’” Alas, thanks to FCC constraints, a character gets this reference, denying us the “rent boy's” full explication on broadcast television.

Confronted with this evidence, Arnold’s Cal concedes he knows of such a man, “but it’s always so dark in those (massage parlor) rooms” that he can’t ID him. Having had massages that didn’t end in a booty bump – and, having entered that thought into evidence, I must further add, “having no massages that in fact did end in a booty bump” – I must call b.s. on that explanation, as do the detectives. Arnold’s actually far better than Chevy Chase was as Mel Gibson’s doppelganger in a “Law & Order” episode earlier this season; he crumples quite convincingly when badgered under interrogation. Of course, having been married to Roseanne, he’s no doubt had plenty of experience.

In the end, though the episode manages to get in a few shots at fundamentalist Christianity’s elements of close-mindedness, it absolves it of the worst of sins. Then allows us all to rail: Damn you, secular progressives!

- “Law & Order: Criminal Intent:” 9 p.m. Tuesday, NBC (Channel 4).