How televangelist Tammy Faye Messner turned a homosexual icon

Messner, who appeared on TV for practically all of her grownup life, might come off as synthetic onscreen. But it was groundbreaking in 1985, when she interviewed a gay man living with AIDS and confirmed him compassion (amid some very private questions on her interviewee’s intercourse life). It was a departure from the norm to listen to an individual in her place — half of an evangelical Christian couple — assist homosexual individuals, particularly as evangelism turned more and more conservative. Messner spoke out about that, too.

She interviewed a homosexual AIDS affected person

The HIV/AIDS epidemic had barely been mentioned by the US authorities, not to mention a televangelist couple just like the Bakkers, within the Eighties when it reached its peak. But in 1985, Messner invited AIDS affected person and minister Steve Pieters onto her present to debate his prognosis, his religion and his sexuality.

When talking to Pieters, who was recovering from chemotherapy, Messner began to tear up over his mother and father’ response when he got here out as homosexual.

“No matter what happens to a young person in their life, they’re still your boy, they’re still your girl,” she stated. “And I think it’s so important that we as mom and dad love through anything.”

After telling Pieters she needed to “put [her] arms around him,” she went on to ask him about his sexual relationships with girls and whether or not he thought he simply hadn’t given girls a “fair try.”

“I’ve had so many people tell me over the years those were such stupid questions or such silly questions, but for her audience they were the right questions,” Pieters instructed KABC earlier this month.

She teared up once more in the course of the interview after Pieters mentioned shedding his buddies, asking her dwell viewers and the viewers, “How sad that we as Christians, who are to be the salt of the earth, we who are supposed to be able to love everyone, are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care?”

“I was probably one of the first ever to have a gay man on my show,” she stated of the episode with Pieters. “And so I think they remember that. They knew that we accepted them.”

She confirmed up for homosexual supporters

Throughout the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, she was a daily attendee at Washington’s Capital Pride Festival, even co-judging a Tammy Faye lookalike contest with raucous drag queen Lady Bunny. She assisted homosexual advocacy teams at charity occasions and befriended notable homosexual figures like RuPaul and the filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, and the pair finally directed the 2000 documentary about Messner’s life.

That documentary was largely sympathetic towards Messner and highlighted her reputation amongst homosexual followers — and it helped reshape the picture of Messner from a disgraced televangelist to a pillar of accepting Christianity.

“I say everybody must be who they are,” she stated, talking to the digicam like she did for thus a few years on the PTL Network. “Young people, don’t ever let anyone make you something that you’re not.”

She referred to as out anti-gay Christians

“I don’t think of them as homosexuals, I just think of them as other human beings that I love,” she tells a shocked Jerry Falwell, performed by Vincent D’Onofrio. “You know, we’re all just people, made out of the same old dirt. And God didn’t make any junk!”

In her interview with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Messner stated Christians had “gotten far away” from the church’s teachings of acceptance and love for all individuals.

“[Christians] have become condemning,” she stated after reasserting her love for her homosexual followers. “It’s just sad to me what has happened to Christians today.”

The limits to Tammy Faye’s assist of homosexual rights

“It comes back to this forgiveness thing,” Shulman instructed NPR. “If you read between the lines, she’s not saying to me, ‘It’s OK that you’re gay; she’s saying, ‘I forgive you for being gay and when you go off and die, it’s going to be between you and your maker.'”

In a 2002 interview that very same yr with Metro Weekly, Messner was requested what recommendation she would give to a younger homosexual particular person whose mother and father have not accepted them.

“Don’t throw your gayness in anyone’s face, just live your life,” she instructed Metro Weekly. “But I also think honesty is always the best policy.”

Messner’s recognition of the LGBTQ group was nonetheless vital throughout her lifetime. Though he was skeptical about her motivations, Schulman instructed NPR “we could all stand to learn from” her, including, “If you can find it in your heart to love everybody, no matter what their flaws, then how is that a bad thing?”