Jimmy, Jimmy...

Jonathan Dresner brought this to my attention on Tuesday: Jimmy Swaggart, giving a sermon this past weekend, said this about gays and lesbians:

I'm trying to find the correct name for it . . . this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. . . . I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died.

Eugene Volokh challenges those of who know Jesus as Lord:

... it seems to me that decent Christians ought to condemn this defender of murder, who publicly says that he'd violate the Ten Commandments when someone "looks at [him]" the wrong way, while purporting to preach God's word and lead Christian congregations. Tell us, at least, that this supposed Christian — who was once one of the nation's leading evangelists, until he was tripped up by another of the Commandments — doesn't speak for you.

Okay, here goes: Jesus is my Savior, Jimmy don't speak for me. Perhaps I shall put that to music. (And yes, mother dear, the "don't" is an affectation.)

David Batstone at the essential Sojourners magazine is organizing an email protest, read more about it here.

What grabs me about Swaggart's stupid, unChristian remarks is the masculine braggadocio that undergirds them. We live in a culture in which men, even now, grow up terrified of one thing above all else: being exposed as weak, a "sissy", a "faggot." (It goes without saying that our culture cannot distinguish between femininity and male homosexuality.) On school playgrounds across the country, expressing one's contempt and hatred for homosexuals is thus the sine qua non of coming of age for young men. Gay activists in the 1970s, taking a term of opprobrium and turning it on its head, coined the phrase "fear of faggotry", which drives the point home in a nicely alliterative way.

In our hyper-masculine culture, young boys wound each other with taunts of gayness. No word can inflame the self-righteous indignation of most young boys the way "fag" or "queer" or "homo" can. "Fat" doesn't hurt the same way. "Ugly" doesn't hurt the same way. (I don't hear a lot of little girls calling each other "dykes" as insults; if my readers have different information, please provide). When I was a kid, I would hear older boys talk about what they would do to a gay man if they saw him:

"I'd beat him up!", one boy would proudly proclaim.

"Nah, I'd kill him, he doesn't deserve to live", another would sagely add.

Our most popular playground game? A simple game of tackling called "Smear the Queer."

I remember the football coaches at my high school -- adult males, mind you -- calling their players faggots. "You tackle like a queer, Richards", one would yell; "Beat his faggoty ass", another grown man would yell at his defensive line as they closed in on a running back. No one said a word of complaint. For a male to speak up against this hyper-homophobic culture would be to reveal his own queerness. Most adult male teachers I knew were a bit in awe of the football coaches -- and this was California, not Texas. Most carried their own memories of being called "faggot" with them. Women did often complain about rough language, and were either ignored or patronized.

I don't think Jimmy Swaggart really would kill a gay man who approached him. (Perhaps I'm just being optimistic). When I read his words, I harkened back to countless similar, idiotic declarations I heard on the playgrounds of my youth. I confess that out of my own desperate desire to be accepted, when I was in elementary school or junior high, I played "smear the queer" and used homophobic slurs with abandon, so eager was I not to be cast out and rejected by my peers. Like Jimmy, I didn't want to kill gays, I just wanted to prove my own masculinity -- something about which I, like most guys that age, was in considerable doubt about!

Some of us grow up to become strong men comfortable in our own skins, rejoicing in our own sexuality, unafraid of warm associations with our gay brothers. Some of us don't. What I heard last week from Swaggart's pulpit was the cry of the insecure adolescent male. It doesn't excuse it. Not in an adult man, and especially not in a man who claims to be anointed as a preacher of the Word.

I'm praying for Jimmy this morning. And for all queer folk who have been the victims of violence, verbal, physical, and emotional. And my dear sweet God, I repent for all that I have said and done to try and show others that I, Hugo, was a "real man."

Comments

[graham]

You gotta love infallible reasoning though. It's insane 'cos Jimmy would never do it. Why, it's gotta be crazy then! ;o)

I was talking this thru with a conservative evangelical friend of mine who was (genuinely) trying to understand my viewpoint and he said, "But it's so unnatural!" And I had to think that surely that's how a gay guy feels when Jimmy tells him that he needs to marry a woman.

[I've been in some contexts where "dyke" was a common insult amongst females. Oh - and this is slightly off-topic - but I've always been far more hurt by "fat" than "Queer." But, "big fat poof" -- that's the killer!]

[Laura]

What scares me is how many people follow Jimmy's teachings and respect his interpretation of the Bible. What was heard from him at the pulpit that day will resonate through more minds than just those of us who disagree with him.

[Michelle]

Unfortunately, he speaks the language of many people, as Laura points out. I grew up with this crap, and it is scary how much sense it makes to some folks. I like your comparison to playground insults--that is so right on.

[Sheelzebub]

I just never understood this. As a kid, I was always taught that Christians are supposed to do things like feed the poor, visit the sick, and love our neighbors. You'd think that Swaggert's plate would be full, considering all the poverty and illness in this country. Not to mention the people left homeless and traumatized by the hurricanes pounding the south and the Carribean.

Short version: doesn't he have better things to do???

Sheesh.

(I'm enjoying your blog, BTW.)

[Jen]

Ugh! I just don't even know what to say to that. Swaggert will have to answer to God someday for his actions.

[DJW]

Good post, Hugo, but I was never worried about you!

If some of the conservative, anti-gay-for-theological-reasons Christians wonder why so many of the rest of us have a hard time believing the that theology is, in fact, the origin of and reason for their views on the matter, the apparent toleration of stuff like this is part of the reason why.

[Todd Granger]

I will not suggest that many of us "conservative, anti-gay-for-theological-reasons Christians" (fairly tendentious "description", don't you think?) have always spoken up in defense of our gay brothers and lesbian sisters in the Church, or in defense of gay men and lesbians in society at large. We haven't. And when we haven't, when we have stood by and listened to their humanity being denigrated, we have sinned.

In an e-mail exchange that I had a few weeks ago with Martin Reynolds, the press secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in Britain, we agreed that one area in which evangelical catholic and traditionalist Anglicans could try carefully to listen to the gay and lesbian Christians in their midst (as recommended by the same 1998 Lambeth resolution that declared homosexual relationships to be in conflict with Holy Scripture) related to this issue of gay-bashing, which erupts with terrible violence in various places around the globe. We agreed that conservative Anglicans (and other Christians) should be outspoken in their defense of the humanity of gays and lesbians, in fulfillment of our baptismal vows to "respect the dignity of every human being" and to "seek and serve Christ in all people".

As a halting step toward that end, I have taken the opportunity to send Mr Swaggart an e-mail message through the Sojourners link noted above, with the following edit in the final paragraph of their suggested text:

>>Holy Scripture and the catholic Tradition of the Church teach that the only faithful expression of sexuality is that within the context of marriage between a man and a woman, and that homosexual relations - no less and no more than unmarried heterosexual relations - are sinful. But I encourage you to search your heart and repent of attitudes that entertain hatred or violence against your brothers and sisters who, regardless of your beliefs about their behavior, "are made in the likeness of God."<<

The self-righteous and tendentious tone of your questioning the source of our objection to homosexual relationships is unfortunate. (For the record, we are not "anti-gay", whatever that means. I myself am fairly agnostic - though tending toward agreement - on the matter of civil unions.)

I genuinely wish that you could ask us whence our objections arise in a way that suggests that you want an honest response, a response that you will believe without pretending to know the motives of our hearts.

[John]

Amen, Todd.

[Martin Reynolds]

I was very grateful to Todd for the thoughtful exchange we had a while back. Now I thank him for this message to Jimmy. In all the heat we must never loose our love and respect for other, I was always taught the other was the Lord.

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