Chip and Joanna Gaines, a beloved Christian couple and reality television celebrities, stand accused by fellow evangelicals of being traitors to the MAGA evangelical understanding of Christian faith.
Their act of betrayal: Casting a gay couple with twin boys on their Back to the Frontier reality show.
There’s a sickening sense of déjà vu about evangelical outrage over all matters related to human sexuality. Never has it been more depressing to say, “Here we go again.”
From Jerry Falwell’s pathetic attacks on Teletubbies to the “God hates fags” banner of Westboro Baptist Church to the most virile anti-gay evangelical preachers in America, here we go again. I don’t think evangelicals ever will recover from their outrage over Obergefell v. Hodges.
The Chip and Joanna story
Chip and Joanna Gaines rose to fame after the 2013 premiere of their HGTV show Fixer Upper. In each episode, the married couple chose a home to renovate and redecorate.
From this one humble show, the Gaineses built an empire. After establishing a media company they named after the home goods store Joanna originally opened in 2003, Magnolia Market, the Gaineses since have branched out into magazines, cookbooks, cooking shows, a line of home decor items for sale at Target, a real estate brokerage and a television network.
According to outraged evangelicals, the Gaines empire now faces an existential threat because Back to the Frontier includes a gay couple with two children. My interest in this evangelical bruhaha arises from the evangelical ability to cloak all their concerns into what they call a language of love. Evangelical love for gays is a contradiction, a set of filthy rags of alleged righteousness not fit for the kingdom of God.
Evangelical love involves shame disgust and cruelty.
Shaming in the name of love
The evangelical language of love cavorts with some strange emotions. Understanding the evangelical definition of love requires attention to their pedagogy of shame. Affect theory professor Silvan Tomkins says shame involves “the affect of indignity, of defeat, of transgression and of alienation.” Evangelical love dishes out all these emotions by shaming the Gaines’ decision to feature a gay couple on their television series.
Shame injects disappointment into others. Even if the person completely rejects the shaming effort, there is still the negative, joy-robbing impact of the shamers. Evangelical shame attacks have a particular body posture in mind. As the evangelical group shames Chip and Joanna, they are trying to force the couple to lower their heads and eyes in shame. This is not an act of loving persuasion but an act of abusive coercion.
“This has more to do with relations of power than it does with love.”
This has more to do with relations of power than it does with love. Tomkins writes: “Contempt is the mark of the oppressor. The hierarchical relationship is maintained either when the oppressed one assumes the attitude of contempt for himself or hangs his head in shame.”
Evangelical politics — the politics of gender, sexuality, queerness, family and marriage — are organized around a coercive effort to keep bodies in line with evangelical teaching.
Evangelicals attempt to bludgeon others with a theology that God calls homosexuality a sin, the Bible condemns same-sex marriage and therefore is wrong. These presumptions are not as self-evident as evangelicals claim.
For example, there are an estimated 823,000 married same-sex couples in the United States. And 69% of Americans support same-sex marriage.
A large contingent of biblical scholars have reached conclusions opposite those of evangelicals. The Episcopal Church, United Methodists, the UCC, American Baptists, Lutherans and Presbyterian Church (USA) ordain gays. But still evangelicals act as if one gay couple on television is one gay couple too many.
“Evangelicals act as if one gay couple on television is one gay couple too many.”
Franklin Graham accused the Gaineses of committing sin: “Promoting something that God defines as sin is in itself sin.” And then: “I hope this isn’t true, but I read today that Chip and Joanna Gaines are featuring a gay couple in their new series. If it is true, it is very disappointing.”
“Why are you promoting homosexuality as a Christian?” asked cultural commentator Jon Root. “Why compromise on the Bible’s clear teachings on this? Why support homosexuals buying kids? Disappointed would be an understatement.”
Evangelicals seem to believe repetition is another word for “being right.” The evangelical playbook should be titled: “How to Shame.” One headline put it: “Chip and Joanna Gaines Put a Gay Couple on their New Show. All Hell Broke Loose.”
Far-right commentator Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire called the Gaineses “frauds,” while Megan Basham described them as “Pharisees … publicly parading their false religion in the marketplace.” Joel Berry of the Babylon Bee blamed the Gaines’ pastor for not shunning their family from the church, while the American Family Association’s Ed Vitagliano also expressed sadness and disappointment.
“We aren’t sure why the Gaineses have reversed course,” he said, “but we are sure of this: Back to the Frontier promotes an unbiblical view of human sexuality, marriage and family — a view no Christian should embrace.”
What does shaming have to do with love?
The language of disgust
The real target of these evangelicals is the gay couple in Back to the Frontier. One critic surmised, “There were no gay couples on the frontier.” This is an attempt to portray a gay couple as disgusting. Chip and Joanna are also disgusting by association.
“This is an attempt to portray a gay couple as disgusting.”
The word “disgust” means something offensive to the taste. How odd for “bad taste” to be the nature of evangelical rejection of homosexuality. Just as one of the most famous of the anti-gay texts in the Bible, Leviticus 18, deals with what is unclean and includes food and sexual activity together, the idea of disgust is a matter of taste, not theology.
By having a gay couple — objects of disgust to evangelicals — on their show, the Gaineses become disgusting. As Sara Ahmed explains in Cultural Politics of Emotion, “Anything which has had contact with disgusting things itself becomes disgusting.”
Glenn T. Stanton, a Focus on the Family representative, makes clear the real target of evangelical wrath is directed at the gay couple — Joe Riggs and Jason Hanna. I’m surprised he used their names since to name someone gives them recognition, visibility and power.
Stanton smears Riggs and Hanna with old-fashioned disgust. These gay men are “attention hounds.” They have a “seriously disturbing anything-but-down-home story.”
“Riggs and Hanna ended up with twin boys from the 43 fertilized eggs they procured. How do two gay men produce such a result? … The Dallas Morning News informs us the two men produced their essential male biological contribution while watching gay porn at a Forth Worth fertility clinic. That, and hundreds of thousands of dollars later.”
Mounting his massive “high horse” stallion of disgust, Stanton concludes: “There is no part of this family story that is ethical or natural. It commodifies the buying and selling, creating and destroying of children. It objectifies women’s fertility for cash. It deliberately deprives two boys of their right to and need for their mother. All these practices surely go against the values that drew millions of faithful viewers to the Gaineses in the first place. Chip and Joanna should do some listening.”
What does disgust have to do with love?
The language of love-cruelty
I charge evangelicals with hiding cruelty in the cloaks of love. Cruel people don’t have permission to hide behind spurious claims of love when it comes to gays.
Cruelty disguised as love is the cruelest of all. I heard William Muehl say, “We are at our worst when we are acting in love.”
Franklin Graham’s favorite theme is how much love he has for gays: “While we are to love people, we should love them enough to tell them the truth of God’s word. His word is absolute truth. God loves us, and his design for marriage is between one man and one woman.”
Author and conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey posted: “Chip: You can’t out-love God. God is love, which means 2 things: 1) He gets to define it. 2) Everything he says and does he says and does in love.”
I have news for Graham and Stuckey. Their language of love dissolves in their language of shame, disgust and cruelty. C.S. Lewis, in Four Loves, claims “gift love” is the highest form of love. This is the love that is extended with generosity, openness, acceptance. This is the love that values the other person. I can’t make any credible connection between evangelical shame, disgust and cruelty with gift love.
“The attempt to redeem acts of cruelty by framing those transgressions as love smacks of a cynical hypocrisy.”
Evangelical claims of love are acts of cruelty. The attempt to redeem acts of cruelty by framing those transgressions as love smacks of a cynical hypocrisy. Kumarini Silva, University of South Carolina communication professor, says: “Cruelty is love that cannot be expressed. Or it is a love poorly expressed or a love that is overpowering or a love that is yearning in a beast who longs to be a prince.”
Acts of violence, abuse or hate that are cruel but justified as misguided love are a dominant characteristic of MAGA evangelicals.
Just as abusive husbands swear they love their wives, so evangelicals swear they love gays even as they exclude them and attempt to erase them from our common life.
The evangelical insistence on love of gays is a necessary part of their cruelty. Without the protests of love as the animating motivation, everyone would easily recognize cruelty for what it is: a physical and/or emotional state of violence that produces a sense of precarity that is sustained by evangelical practices.
Silva contends, “Cruelty is the foundation of American culture and American exceptionalism.” Evangelical acts of cruelty against the gay community are justified as misguided affection, especially misguided evangelism. Telling gays they are loved in order to save them is the animating force for evangelical rejection of gays.
“A false interpretation of the word of God repeated endlessly is still a false interpretation.”
This is the evangelical justification of cruelty that becomes the foundation of and excuse for a misguided Christianity. This misguided love is central to the defense of evangelical Christians. If their actions can’t be linked to God, God’s word and love, then they are exposed as cruel. A false interpretation of the word of God repeated endlessly is still a false interpretation.
I doubt Chip and Joanna have changed their evangelical values. They are not suddenly “woke” or pro-gay or ready to fly the Pride flag. They are probably, at best, moderates attempting to square the teachings of Jesus with how gays are treated in evangelical culture.
I encourage their ongoing resistance to the love of evangelicals, the love expressed by shame, disgust and cruelty. No matter how many times evangelicals gather to reassure one another of how loving they are and how many verses of “They shall know we are Christians by our love,” they sing, I am convinced they are not, in fact, Christians. Their love is a false love. No matter how hard I try, even with a shovel, I can’t dig out of all the shame, disgust and cruelty to get to the love language of evangelicals.
Same-sex couples are not in violation of any of God’s commandments. They are not an abomination to God, only to evangelicals. They are normal, visible, lovable, contributing members of society.
Evangelicals need to know that millions of Americans will not bow the knee, the head or the eyes to their insidious rhetoric of shame, disgust and cruelty.
