"Make America Straight Again"

 All through this last weekend, my morning feed updated me about an event in Orlando, a "Make America Straight Again" conference. Scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shootings, this conference features a lineup of New Independent Fundamental Baptist ministers all giving livestreamed sermons about how gay people deserve the death penalty. It is a good thing, they preach, that LGBTQ+ people (whom they prefer to call f**gots) were murdered in the nightclub massacre. Here's the Rev. Stephen Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, reflecting on the Pulse massacre:

The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay?

Charming as vomit on a hot sidewalk.

As it turns out, Anderson isn't a new figure to me. As a researcher, I've long been fascinated with him. I've listened to hours of his recorded sermons (many of which my ever-patient partner also endured), watched countless videos by him, and wrote about him extensively in my book. There I focused mainly on his "soul-winning" technique. As demonstrated here, Anderson promotes an especially precise method for evangelical proselytization, and he explains it very clearly.

One doesn't have to look far into his extensive YouTube archive, however, to see that soul-winning is but one star in the constellation of his passions. There's many a discourse on the unique authority of the 1611 King James translation of scripture. There's his jeremiads on the evils of education beyond the home (even Bible colleges--especially Bible colleges--are forbidden). And as with any faith self-consciously more radical than its relative mainstream, there's many a video condemning flavors of fundamentalist Christianity ever-so-slightly divergent from Anderson's own, such as churches that doesn't baptize via full immersion or that use the New International Version.

But throughout all these concerns runs the recurrent theme of the reprobate sodomite. He loves to talk about how much he hates them. (God, he assures us, hates them too.) I'll decline to link to his many, many sermons about how awful we are. The quote I shared above gives the gist of it.

Such undiluted, acid hatred is rare to behold in non-parodied form. As a scholar of conservative evangelicalism, I have an academic interest in how unapologetically extreme Anderson is. But really, I think he exerts an odd pull for a lot of people. Listening to him, watching this guy preach sincerely and passionately about how gay folk like me are actually murderous, abusive sociopaths, I feel the same horrified curiosity I experience reading the prolapsing jaws of the marine bloodworm. I can't look away.

Anderson's aura of awful is both useful and dangerous.

Here's the useful part (and I qualify this with a warning that I think Anderson's words are better left unshared in most non-specialized contexts): he puts the average "I just believe what the Bible says" anti-gay argument to shame. Whenever I hear a conservative Methodist lecture about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, I think of Anderson and his friends. I don't mean that my traditionalist brothers and sisters are exactly like Anderson. They certainly aren't. I mean that Anderson is more fundamentalist, more literalist, than they are.

See, according to Anderson, the correct reading of Romans 1:26-27 ("For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions....") isn't (just) that homosexuality is condemned as a sin; it's that same-sex lust is the consequence for reprobates who have already abandoned God in their pride. Gays are by definition evil, dangerous people. Their love for their own gender isn't the cause but a symptom of their evilness. For Anderson et al., execution is the only just response. (They're careful to deny endorsing vigilante justice; the government, they aver, should institute to the death penalty for gays. Naturally, Anderson is not especially keen on the government being so proactive in other arenas of life.)

Now of course I don't agree with his interpretation any more than I endorse the mainstream conservative Christian reading. But, in terms of a literalist, "I just believe what the Bible says" hermeneutic, I can't help but see Anderson's reading as stronger. I admit I get a bit fed up sometimes with the "hate the sin/love the sinner" rhetoric I hear from mainstream anti-gay conservative Christians (though by and large I do not doubt their good intentions). There's part of me that finds Anderson's consistency and honesty refreshing. You can't have your cake and eat it too, he says. So awful is homosexuality, in Anderson's view, that you must hate the sinner as well as the sin.

The dangerous part of Anderson's trainwreck appeal is subtler. (I'm bracketing for now the obvious possibility that Anderson's rhetoric might inspire actual anti-LGBTQ violence. It might, and that's cause enough for some serious conversations about the spread of dangerous speech online. Anderson and his crew are going well beyond where Phelps ever went in terms of outlining and celebrating specific anti-gay violence scenarios.)

But even aside from that remote-but-real threat, the danger of self-avowed haters like Anderson lies in how easy they are to condemn. It's hard for me to imagine the average person hearing about Anderson's event and not recoiling in disgust. He casts himself so far beyond the Overton Window of mainstream discourse on homosexuality that he practically comes pre-demonized.

Unfortunately, though, his extreme example can give rhetorical cover to more mainstream anti-gay beliefs. Many pundits and pastors on the Christian right espouse policies that would in practice  criminalize LGBTQ+ lives. Yet they can point to the "Make America Straight Again" conference, cluck their tongues, and say, See? That's what hate looks like. We're preaching love. We just don't approve of lifestyles that stem from psychological and spiritual dysfunction... He hands them the "Well, compared to Steven Anderson, we're not so bad" excuse.

Anderson also gives those on the left a big, easy target to aim at. It's simple to condemn him. Anyone can do it. It requires little thought, zero reflection. It allows us give ourselves a round of back-patting see what an activist I am? kudos. Now, I like gold stars. Positive reinforcement plays a vital role in the longevity and success of social movements.

But affirming that it's shocking and offensive to celebrate the deaths of 50 young queer and queer-allied people represents a ludicrously low bar for decency. Hurdling that bar, for most people, just isn't a challenging or meaningful accomplishment.

Fighting Anderson is a bit like eating brightly colored candy. It's quick and thrilling, but doesn't give you much long-term nourishment in dismantling subtler forms of homo/bi/trans/queerphobia. It leaves institutional sexual and gender privilege systems largely unexamined. Homophobia instead becomes a relatively simple problem of a few individual bigots. Unapologetically antigay pundits exist. But factor these folk out of the equation and you still find yourself light years away from justice, liberty, and equality for LGBTQ+ people.


None of this stops me as an academic from finding Anderson and his views important and fascinating. But getting to the worthwhile questions about him, I think, means passing quickly through the standard, easy "ugh" most people (hopefully) feel when they hear about his conference.

More tomorrow,

JF