More on Falwell-hatred

Actually, reading through this Falwell-hate post I linked to below, written by Washington Blade managing editor Kevin Naff (also available at the Blade site here), there's something in it that seems worth unpacking. It's not simply that he despises Jerry Falwell and toasts his death; it's that he indicates himself to be completely impervious to the possibility that he may be wrong to do so.

Naff begins by noting the tributes to Falwell coming in, and two of them stand out to me -- the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner.

Jackson described Falwell as having a “heart of gold,” even though Falwell was a rabid racist during the civil rights movement.
...
Even Tammy Faye Messner appeared by phone in an interview with CNN’s Larry King, telling him that she “broke into tears” upon hearing the news of Falwell’s death, despite years of animosity between them that began when Falwell stole the ministry founded by Tammy and Jim Bakker.

Now I am no fan of Reverend Jackson. But say everything what you want about overhyping his past glories, or his selling out of the unborn, or Hymietown, or his corruption, or his shakedown schtick, or the mistresses on the payroll -- it remains the case that Jackson saw King assassinated and he was at Selma. And even apart from those seminal moments, all black men of Jackson's age know hate from hate. Jackson has absolute legitimacy on the matter of the heart of a segregationist and Naff simply has no standing. It isn't rebutted by the fact of Falwell's having been a segregationist (which Falwell has both always admitted and always regretted since before founding the Moral Majority). And if a black man of Jesse Jackson's age and biography can find it in his soul to forgive Falwell for having been a segregationist and praise him as having "a heart of gold," then frankly who is Kevin Naff to say otherwise on those grounds, that he knows better?

I am more of a fan of Tammy Faye (see below), but some of the same points apply. Here's another part of her Larry King appearance last night.

KING: Jerry -- the surprise -- I mean, Tammy Faye, the surprising thing about that is you had some harsh things to say about Jerry Falwell. You were angry with him when he took over "The PTL Club." You have said things on this program not very nice about him. Why did his death hit you so hard?
MESSNER: I think I wish we could have cleared everything up. I wanted to talk to him and settle him -- and settle things with him. And I tried to do it many times and I tried to do it nicely. And I wanted just so badly to just give him a hug and say, hey, you know, it's all right. It's OK.
We're all human. We all make mistakes. Let's just start over again and -- and go forward from here.
Yesterday is yesterday. Today is today.

In both cases, Naff holds grudges against Falwell on grounds that the aggrieved parties themselves -- Jackson and Messner -- have put behind them and say do not matter now. If Tammy Faye can say she wanted to put the PTL brouhaha to rest, I fail to see why Naff gets to hold it against Falwell. Keep in mind who we're talking about here, in Tammy Faye. We're talking about not simply a camp icon, but a woman who has been at a half-dozen Washington Pride Parades, and a woman who said the following to Washington's gay weekly about male homosexuals:

I love them and they love me. It's just unbelievable. I've never felt such warmth in a group of people. That's the truth. ...
I feel like I'm a mom or a sister to most of those guys, I really do. They treat me like I'm family and that means more to me than anything could ever possibly mean. ...
[Y]ou've got to remember that PTL was one of the very first [Christian television shows] to help the gays. And I was probably one of the first ever to have a gay man on my show. ... We didn't turn anyone away. And I think the gays appreciated that. We accepted the gay community when most religious elements did not.

and this

MW: What would you say to the parent who does not want to accept their child as gay?
TAMMY FAYE: If they don't accept it I would say shame on them. When you're a parent you accept your child as he or she is. ... Your child is not you. ... I would tell that parent, love your child just exactly the way he or she is.
MW: What happens to the parent who won't acknowledge their child?
TAMMY FAYE: The parent loses.

You can fault Tammy Faye's lack of theological intellect, but she is about as pro-gay as a religious figure gets. Yet this gay newsman breezily blows off what she says about Falwell to indulge in his own Two Minutes of Hate.

I'm not saying that Naff or any other homosexual is somehow obliged to agree with Tammy Faye or Jackson. But one would nevertheless hope that an adult intellect would at least give a sign or two of thinking or having thought along the lines of "hmm ... maybe if Messner and Jackson are both paying tribute to Falwell despite their justified personal issues with him, I might reassess my own." In the best of circumstances, perhaps it could even occur to Naff (and I know he's not alone in having the kind of reaction he did) that Messner and Jackson are both Christians, both minister-evangelists, and yet one is a gay icon and the other has an impeccable record of progressive politics. Maybe there might be more to Christianity than right-wing "homophobia." And maybe the fact that forgiveness came to them despite the wrongs committed against them means there's more to the world that a Christian can see but I can't.

After all, it's not surprising that Naff wouldn't listen to Falwell (or me, probably), but if Jackson and Messner cannot make him reconsider his bile in the light of their contrary example and clear legitimacy ... who ever could? I know one should never write off anyone as irredeemably lost, but ...

Maybe something else Tammy Faye said in her Metro Weekly interview needs to be absorbed:

MW: So you’ve forgiven him [referring to Jim Bakker].
TAMMY FAYE: Oh, I forgave him long ago. I forgave Jim the day that our divorce became final. I forgave him for everything and went on with my life.
MW: How does one come to a state of forgiveness?
TAMMY FAYE: It's a choice. You ask God to help you and then you just make the choice. It's not worth living in unforgiveness. I have a saying that forgiveness is the greatest gift you can give yourself. And I gave myself that gift of forgiveness with the help of God. I forgave everyone that hurt me. Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, I forgave all those people.
MW: But can gays people forgive a man like Falwell who has persecuted us so vehemently?
TAMMY FAYE: It's a choice, that's all it is. Forgiveness is a choice. And it's a choice you ask God to help you keep. It doesn't happen overnight. Forgiveness is an ongoing battle. And sometimes when I see Jerry Falwell my heart hurts. But then I say to God, “God I forgave him, I gave Jerry Falwell to you, you take care of him,” and then I'm okay again. So he's in God's hands, he's not in Tammy Faye's hands.
MW: Clearly forgiveness is an important component of your life.
TAMMY FAYE: Yes. It's the only way you can have true happiness because unforgiveness eats you up inside. It's like an acid and it will truly make you sick. I think unforgiveness has been more people's problem than anything in the world. Because when you see somebody you are angry at, your tummy tenses up, your blood pressure goes up, your fists clench, you go into a different mode. And that's not good for the body. So people should forgive just to save themselves.

"My life is in your hands"

Now more than ever.

I got the news while in a movie theater last night, about 1020pm from one of my Courage brothers, the here-mentioned Tar Heel who loved Tammy Faye as much as I did. He sent this simple three-word text message to me:

Rip tammy faye

As a writer, one never knows what will resonate with people. Whenever I check my traffic since May, without fail, I learn that some people have been directed from a word search for "Tammy Faye" to this post "As She Lay Dying," which has gotten prominently listed on major search engines. The editor of one of Washington's two principal gay weeklies, Sean Bugg of Metro Weekly, wrote about my post about her. Just earlier this week, I got the following e-mail from a stranger:

Subject: Thank you for your blog on Tammy Faye
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:25:36 -0700
I caught your blog today and cried. I saw tammy faye on larry king live last night which
devastated me. I will pray for her soul. She is a christian who loves all people (black, white, gay, square).etc.

thank you

Tammy Faye's death was, of course, not unexpected. As the writer noted, she appeared again on "Larry King Live" earlier this week (video excerpts here; transcript here). To say that she didn't look good would be an understatement. That was my dominant initial reaction, though one I quickly took back mentally when I mulled it over.

It was the latest and final proof that superficial appearance didn't matter to Tammy Faye. It's too bad that in English the word "shameless" has come to have a negative connotation, because it describes her appearing on TV to encourage people and talk about the Lord and His presence in her life while she was on death's doorstep. Shame didn't matter to her. Or maybe "prideless" is the word I'm looking for (except that I don't think it's an "official" Webster-approved word). The kind of pride that would keep most of us off TV in her state and which caused her son Jay to have her exit his reality-TV show "One Punk Under God" when she was in obviously better condition than she was this week -- that just didn't matter to her. Only evangelizing did. And if that meant appearing on TV in this way, so be it. Roger Ebert made a similar point about refusing to hide his own illness. One of John Paul the Great's last great witnesses was refusing to give in to his manifest infirmities, to be an icon of Christ in his illness.

Ironically, one part of the King interview, that Yahoo excerpted above or a clip, was providential for me:

I talk to God every single day. And I say, "God, my life is in your hands and I trust you with me."

Earlier on Saturday, a few hours before I learned Tammy Faye had died and while (I'm guessing) her ashes were being scattered, I was in confession, tears again (though no mascara -- I'm a butch, manly-type homo). My parish pastor listened to another bout of despairing doubt and said that better cultivation of Hope was needed. His penance was to repeat several times a short prayer "Jesus, I trust in you."

(Aside: I swear to God, as I write at 2am Sunday morning, my iTunes just rotated randomly to Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," a song that was almost certainly consumed upon release as an 80s slam on televangelism a la Jim and Tammy. But which has lyrics too elemental and too resonant to be contained by this superficial topicality and avoid contrarian appropriation -- having been covered by the devout Christian Johnny Cash near the end of his life. Also, like Tammy Faye. I'll keep iTunes on DM until I'm done.)

But those words "Jesus, I trust in you" were essentially Tammy Faye's last words to the world. She was totally in His hands. And her final days were an act of witness to Father's short prayer, in the face of, in her case, the ultimate earthly darkness.

As she lay dying

One of the great American icons of my teenage years will probably die very soon -- Tammy Faye Bakker. Here is a news account and a link to the letter on her site. The doctors have stopped treating her cancer and she's down to 65 pounds, which is about as bad as medical news gets. Excerpts from the letter:

Thank you for the rooms full of flowers, the tables full of cards, and beautiful little gifts laying everywhere. Thank you so much! I know I have missed so many gifts I should have sent for these special occasions. And then, trusting God to heal my sick stomach. Please try to understand.
The doctors have stopped trying to treat the cancer and so now it's up to God and my faith. And that's enough! But please continue to pray for the pain and sick stomach ... They don't want me falling down the stairs. I am down weight wise to 65 pounds, and look like a scarecrow. I need God's miracle to swallow. ...
To those of you who are suffering as I....."don't give up"!! ... You see, God gives out his promises, they do not lie, they do not fail. We do not have to BEG him for them, they are FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She and husband Jim were at the center of the PTL scandal, one of the biggest religious news events of the 1980s. Like many a teenage cynic I lapped up every detail as Jim Bakker's televangelist empire was brought down by greed and lust. More recently, I watched every episode last year of the reality-show "One Punk Under God," about Jim and Tammy's son Jay Bakker. Partly because I was interested (and not in a good way) in Jay's "Revolution Ministry" and his changing it to a "gay-affirming" stance. But more, as the show wore on (there were just 6 or 8 half-hour episodes), because of the old memories of Tammy Faye, and how the show redeemed her.

Yeah ... back in the day, like many a cynical Gen-X teenager, I doubled over in laughter at footage of Tammy's on-air crying fits, the running mascara, the squeaky voice, and all the rest. I can still mentally play the footage of her standing outside the courthouse the day Jim was convicted of fraud, singing the chorus to "The Solid Rock" ("On Christ the solid Rock I stand / All other ground is sinking sand") and then chirpily saying "it's not over til it's over." She wasn't Kitschy; she was Kitsch. Everything about Tammy was over-the-top, so it's not surprising that she became a bit of a camp hero about a certain ... ahem ... type of man. Some film-makers even made a touching documentary about her that played in theaters, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," with RuPaul as narrator.

But what the One Punk series and the Eyes documentary showed was that this was who she was. The letter shows the same even to the very end. In her letter, she's thanking everybody and apologizing for not sending back cards. Her sense of humor about herself is intact -- joking about looking a scarecrow, and the doctors not wanting her to fall down (she and Jay are constantly joking about her health throughout the show). And the multiple exclamation points ON EVERYTHING!!!!!!!! It's Pentecostal enthousiasmos, something that still strikes this Catholic Gen-X'er as profoundly alien, even as I've learned to admire and in some ways envy it.

"Tammy Faye" wasn't a role or a persona for the sake of a ploy or a scam, like many of us assumed was the case when we heard the stories about the air-conditioned doghouses, the cinnamon rolls baked only for their smell, etc. Tammy was someone so effervescent that she only knew how to be over-the-top. Anything worth doing was worth overdoing. She didn't have the element of cynicism, guile or calculation that keep most of us in check. She was so loving and so trusting a person and so guileless that it never occurred to her to ask whether it was a good use of money to air-condition a doghouse; it made the dog comfortable.

Tammy Faye was a cartoon in many ways, but she wasn't a fake. By the time of the One Punk series, her body was starting to give out from cancer. Son Jay requested, during Episode 5 if memory serves, that she appear no more on screen, as she could barely move around the house or even talk without effort. The dedication to Tammy Faye at the end of the last episode of One Punk read like an epitaph.

But still, throughout the show, she was loving and lovable. When the same attitude is overflowing from an old, sick body that knows it's not long for this world, it's different. The naive good-heartedness that made her so laugh-at funny in the 80s makes her inspiring in old age. Tammy has stayed naively authentic and good-hearted to the very end. She couldn't "reinvent" herself because she was who she was -- a Pentecostal to the bone who saw nothing but God's gifting hand in everything around her. It would be false to say she chose not to be bitter, because the word "bitter" just wasn't in her vocabulary.

Now, everything is in God's hands; all other ground is sinking sand. May God be with her to the end, and beyond.

Some blog business

First of all, my friend David Morrison is back to daily blogging, no doubt jealous of my expanding readership. Last time I met him, I teased him about his losing so much weight. "There's so much less of you to love," I complained.

As long as he stays away from discussions of The Document, we'll be just fine. Oh ... and neither of us was at Washington's annual Celebration of Sodomy Gay Pride Parade. At least I know *I* wasn't.
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Second, one of my Courage brothers read my recent posts about Tammy Faye Messner, whom he as a North Carolina native likes as much as I do. He sent me this link to an interview she gave Entertainment Tonight (there's more of it here).

"When they said there's nothing more we can do, for just about a minute I felt sorry for myself, had my little pity party. Then I said, 'I've got somebody bigger than the doctors, I know the Lord, Jesus Christ, and he can do something for it.' He's the only one that can, and so I just trust Him every day."

It'll be a sad day on Earth when she dies and a happy one in Heaven when she fully sees the Lord she loves at last.