Prancing Preachers: More Roehmosexuality

The Gannon/Guckert scandal has prompted one commentator on Democrats.com to offer these musings:

I know during the Clinton-gate thing, the FBI tracked down one of his accusers blowing boys on a park trail in Georgia. I also now that John Lowndes was outed and divorced from the Christian Coalition.

How many other Xian leaders, who supported this president, are covering their own homosexuality?

I've corrected a couple of spelling errors in this quote. While I don't much care for the increasingly popular contraction "Xian," the basic point here deserves pondering.

According to the Christian fundamentalists, all homosexuals are either suicidal or predatory -- or both. Right-thinking, Bush-voting preachers warn us that the Bible denounces men who act in an effeminate manner. The "gay movement," we are told, uses devious methods to subvert our impressionable youngfolk. That's why Jerry Falwell outed one of the Teletubbies. That's why James Dobson decried the flamboyance of Spongebob Squarepants.

(Or did he? This article, originally published on the Free Republic site, claims that Dobson merely "warned that SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, and dozens of other popular children's characters may soon be used (presumably against their will) to promote the normalization of homosexuality ..." Of course, neither the cited writer nor Dobson has presented any evidence of such a plot; the law prohibits use of those characters for any purpose not approved by the copyright holder. Also, I wasn't aware that Spongebob and Winnie possessed independent wills.)

Gannon-gate has forced us to confront the phenomenon of "Rhoemosexuals" -- gay men who support a political movement devoted to the elimination of homosexuals. Now let's expand our field of study. Let's take a look at the Christian rightists who provide the modern Republican party with its foundation.

Try this experiment. Tune in Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Then flip back and forth between that program and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, or one of the other Jesus channels. Ask yourself: On which show do the men act in a more effeminate manner?

Your results may vary. The outcome of my test was pretty surprising. The Jesus aficionados were a LOT swishier than the Queer Eye crew.

I was astonished by the way televangelists dress: Jewelry. Ties louder than an air raid siren. Baby blue suits. Pastels. What kind of man wears a pastel suit?

The overly fastidious grooming, the toupees, the overall impression of exhibitionism, theatricality and vanity -- all of this is stereotypically sissified. Some of these guys look like they use enough hair dye to drown a hippo. How many heterosexual males use hair dye? Only gays and aging rock stars go to such lengths to recapture lost youth. Straight guys accept the dictates of fate; they learn to live with grey and thinning hair.

Compared to most of the gays in Hollywood, TBN preachers look like FREAKS.

And they way they act is far worse.

I come from a largely Italian family. People of my heritage have a reputation for allowing our emotions to show. As Michael Corleone once observed: "In Sicily, everything's opera."

But Southern Baptists -- especially the ones flouncing around in front of the cameras -- have a tendency toward hyper-emotinalism that even I find embarrassing.

These prancing pastors burst into tears at the drop (or perhaps the passing) of a hat. They are forever dancing, crying, screaming, whispering, shaking with rage, melting with love. Ever wonder what a man would look like if he had PMS? Glance at a TV preacher.

I have always found the hyperbolic histrionics of these cathode-ray-tube Christians to be undignified and faintly disgusting. The mad ministers who lead televised revival meetings tend to fidget and frolic with utter abandon. They cannot stay still for five consecutive seconds; their bodies often jerk and spasm as though electrified. Such behavior would seem over-the-top in a gay disco.

If I had to use one word to describe the look and behavior of these queenly Christians, that word would be 'flamboyant."

These public crybabies, these superego-free Ids, these emotional exhibitionists, these nancyboys of the New Testament have zero business lecturing the rest of the nation on proper masculine behavior.

Come to think of it: Why do their ultra-weepy wives look like drag queens? Do these "women" really possess vaginas, or are we being scammed?

Granted, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson manage to dress and behave in a convincingly heterosexual fashion. But they are exceptional within their trade. (And Robertson, you will recall, frequently used the services of a gay ghostwriter.) Instead of castigating the Teletubbies, Falwell should send a message to his fellow televangelists: "For God's sake, stop dressing and acting like freaks. Start acting like MEN!"

And if they want a refresher course on what non-freakish behavior looks like...well, they might want to catch an episode of "Queer Eye."