God Hates Fags

The Rhetorics of Religious Violence

Michael Cobb

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780814772669
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études LGBT

2007 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

At the funeral of Matthew Shepard—the young Wyoming man brutally murdered for being gay—the Reverend Fred Phelps led his parishioners in protest, displaying signs with slogans like “Matt Shepard rots in Hell,” “Fags Die God Laughs,” and “God Hates Fags.” In counter-protest, activists launched an “angel action,” dressing in angel costumes, with seven-foot high wings, and creating a visible barrier so one would not have to see the hateful signs.

Though long thought of as one of the most virulently anti-gay genres of contemporary American politics and culture, in God Hates Fags, Michael Cobb maintains that religious discourses have curiously figured as the most potent and pervasive forms of queer expression and activism throughout the twentieth century. Cobb focuses on how queers have assumed religious rhetoric strategically to respond to the violence done against them, alternating close readings of writings by James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, Jean Toomer, Dorothy Allison, and Stephen Crane with critical legal and political analyses of Supreme Court Cases and anti-gay legislation. He also pays deep attention to the political strategies, public declarations, websites, interviews, and other media made by key religious right organizations that have mounted the most successful regulations and condemnations of homosexuality.

1 The Language of National Security

A Queer Theory of Religious Language

The word “safety” brings us to the real meaning of the word “religious” as we use it.

—JAMES BALDWIN¹

Fighting Words

The conservative, Christian speech against queers patrols American citizens. It achieves its force, in part, because religious language is thought to be a secure form of language. Its semantic security reveals something unique about religious rhetoric, at least in the United States: there’s something about Western religious language—mostly white Anglo Protestant Christian religious language—that makes one feel its importance for reasons well beyond the actual content the language communicates. According to the National Association of Evangelicals, the number 1 statement of faith is, “We believe the Bible to be inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”² One cannot challenge the feeling of this rhetoric’s absolute authority, which makes the “Word of God” seem full of important meaning that cannot be challenged. We really have no choice.

Kenneth Burke’s crucial study of religious rhetoric, primarily Christian, argues that religious language is an “entitled” kind of language—a language that can lay claim to all sorts of meanings. “Imagine the ideal title of a book,” suggests Burke. “An ideal title would ‘sum up’ all the particulars of the book. It would in a way ‘imply’ these particulars.”³ The Word of God acts as if it is a title, summing up whatever might be suggested by the title, mainly the contents of a book. Certain forms of religious rhetoric function as titles that are entitled to be very generic but still imply all the particulars that are not there—the religious word announces a story that one won’t necessarily hear. But by virtue of the title, we believe there is much behind the title; titles logically must have important words behind them. In fact, the Word of God’s force comes from its abbreviated utterance—it is strong because it can mean so much, but a “so much” that one might not even need to hear the rest of the story in order to be convinced by what the title suggests. We can consider religious rhetoric to be an abstract language that, because it is abstract, can guarantee—can be and carry the title on—almost any assertion one might have.

Although fundamentalists and evangelicals purport never to be “reading too much” into scripture, we should be suspicious. The Bible is a massive and textually unstable document, which must be translated, implied, refined, interpreted, and applied in very ingenious ways all the time. But one cannot emphasize the rhetorical complexity; the Word of God is trumpeted to be simple and true. So in order to characterize the infallibility of the message, certain textual gestures are needed. The blessed assurance of God’s Word must be made to seem intact. Just think of the simple, quick citation of highly decontextualized passages from sacred scripture that will often underwrite the important meaning of the assertion we are supposed to believe. Westboro Baptist Church’s “Godhatesfags.com” Web site, for example, illustrates what must be emphasized to assure the authoritative, inerrant “nature” of God’s Word. In an effort to explicate their Web site’s name, they post the following list:

1. the absolute sovereignty of “GOD” in all matters whatsoever (e.g., Jeremiah 32:17, Isaiah 45:7, Amos 3:6, Proverbs 16:4, Matthew 19:26, Romans 9:11–24, Romans 11:33–36, etc.),

2. the doctrine of reprobation or God’s “HATE” involving eternal retribution or the everlasting punishment of most of mankind in Hell forever (e.g., Leviticus 20:13, 23, Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Malachi 1:1–3, Romans 9:11–13, Matthew 7:13, 23, John 12:39–40, 1 Peter 2:8, Jude 4, Revelation 13:8, 20:15, 21:27, etc.), and

3. the certainty that all impenitent sodomites (under the elegant metaphor of “FAGS” as the contraction of faggots, fueling the fires of God’s wrath) will inevitably go to Hell (e.g., Romans 1:18–32, 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, 1 Timothy 1:8–11, Jude 7, etc.).⁴

We should ignore, only for a moment, that number 2 does not make “HATE” plural so the outline of the three very important theological Words could correspond with the grammar of the slogan “God Hates Fags.” It is more useful to see how this kind of passage is characteristic of much of the evangelical and fundamentalist applications of God’s authority to the practical problems posed by the secular world. Amid a flurry and excess of quotations that carry important, sacred weight in the Web site’s citations, we are left with the implication that there is much force, much “sovereign” authority, behind God’s condemnation of “fags,” an “elegant metaphor.” In fact, there is so much authority that biblical citation (which, as the persistent “etceteras” insinuate, could go on forever) takes the place of explanation and coherent detail of the particular position of religious hatred of queers. Just nodding to the Bible’s words, in fact just citing the location of sacred words from the Bible, will guarantee the strong, religious truth of any assertion one might have. God hates fags . . . it’s in the Bible; I know where.

Milder versions of evangelical sentiment embellish the citations of the Bible but retain the quoting fervor. Stanton Jones, former chair of the Psychology Department at Wheaton College in Illinois, in a piece called “The Loving Opposition,” writes: “When I confront the issue of homosexuality, I do not immediately think of the theology of human sexuality, of Christian sexual ethics, or of matters of church order. To think about homosexuality is to think about people.” But Jones can’t really think about the people too much. The individuals Jones evokes urge him quickly to remember the authoritative Word of God they are violating: “I think of Tom, who begged me to help him regain his Christian faith and stop both his compulsive pursuit of anonymous sexual encounters and his seduction of teenage boys.”⁵ And after a quick list of similarly unlikely friends, we are soon treated to over a page of “explanations” from the Bible (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, Deuteronomy 23:18, Genesis 19, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Timothy 1:10). We are told that in order to love the opposition (homosexuals) we must first take into account that “Leviticus, Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Timothy are binding.”⁶ We don’t have detailed, textual exegeses of these passages; often we just have the titles of passages or the biblical books that suggest strong laws, strong condemnations about homosexuality’s sinfulness. People, in this analysis, immediately disappear into manageable and managing religious words, and from that disappearance we can elaborate a faithful and useful doctrinal opposition, based on the fundamental and, ironically enough, “high view of Scripture.”⁷ Of course, we don’t really get that great of a high, panoramic view—Leviticus is just a bold reference that footnotes the fact that no matter how much one might love the sinner, the sin’s outlaw qualities cannot be overlooked.

Scriptural rants such as these are what we might call political sermons about authority. Strong, entitled words situate sinners as those who must be opposed, who are violating strict prohibitions that are in place to insure the prosperity of a healthy, holy society. This form of religious justification, to be sure, is jeremiad speech. In fact, the American jeremiad, which was always much more than a religious gesture, was called the political sermon, with designs on creating social cohesion through linguistic acts of religious devotion. Bercovitch, years ago, noted:

The ritual of the jeremiad bespeaks an ideological consensus—in moral, religious, economic, social, and intellectual matters—unmatched in any other modern culture. And the power of consensus is nowhere more evident than in the symbolic meaning that the jeremiads infused into the term America. Only in the United States has nationalism carried with it the Christian meaning of the sacred.⁸

And it carried that meaning well beyond the theocratic beginning of the United States, with its puritanical errand, not to mention its colonial economics. That meaning is still embedded in the rhetorics with which we create or say “America.” Something about this rhetorical consensus form of unity—which is an ambiguous, if not contradictory, form modeled by the jeremiad—links nationalism to the Christian conception of the sacred. But this link endures for reasons that are less about sacred devotion and more about being able unify the many into the one. A diverse nationality must have some universal goals. And, in particular, one goal would be the fulfillment of the promise of great, future piousness. We could be that city on the hill, that great, world beacon provided that actions today are cleaned up, made more pure, and directed toward holier, more sacred aims.⁹ The muscular strength of the Christian Word promises this possibility, this unity, this “one nation under God.” Indeed, endless citations of Leviticus’s condemnations of homosexuality, which by its sovereign citation sounds so strong and certain, guarantees strength in religious meaning where now there is vulnerability. We are secure in the Word because, as the circular logic has it, the meaning of that Word, so we’re told, is secure. And if we are secure in the Word, we might also be secure in the World.

When we think of the Christian jeremiad about queers as an important language of the state—a language that need not be specific because it is entitled to ultimate and forceful meaning—we begin to see the rhetoric’s designs on sacred consensus building. We thus can make a difficult but necessary conceptual shift: instead of dismissing this rhetoric as “just” the beliefs of those who have deeply felt religious convictions, we must track the value of this language in the production of national consensus. Certainly religious believers do feel deeply and gain a great deal from those convictions. They also care and love deeply all sorts of people, even those who are the targets of their perhaps unwanted attention. My objective is not to belittle the importance of those beliefs, nor to devalue the faith systems that give meaning, emotion, community, and history to those who share faith.

By focusing on the generic rhetoric of Christian religion, and how that rhetoric has been implicated in American nationality, I hope to point to why this language is so complicit in some of the worst forms of social coercion and injustice. I intend to demonstrate that religious rhetoric is not simply about religious belief and practice, but rather also about nation and state building. When I speak of the religious word, I am not simply talking about a moral language about those who are sinful, nor about a language that designates who among us might be redeemed. I am not simply evoking the connotations of the Hebrew Bible’s vengeful language. Nor am I simply referring to the redemptive language of sin and salvation everywhere in the New Testament. Although the religious words I will cite are derived from conservative brands of Protestant Christianity, and although there will be examples that are Catholic, Jewish, and Mormon words that will be left out,¹⁰ these different genres of religious language, important in most contexts, will not make that much of a difference in the theory of religious language I am advancing. In fact, in the chapters that follow, I will say very little about the theology, history, philosophy, or ethics of particular Western religious traditions. Religious rhetoric is used so generically (especially in a nominally secular nation of many religious faiths) that a specific kind of religious word will not figure prominently. Instead, I am asking us to move beyond the divides between typical conceptions of the sacred and the profane, or the way these realms are always cleanly divided and pitted against each other. I want to consider religious language in another way—one that will not be sufficient for other studies of religion in America, but which will help us understand the violent force of religious rhetoric that targets queers in the United States. The jeremiad speak that most directly concerns this study is a language of authority that is essential for the nation-state, as well as what that nation-state needs in order to keep people in line—legally, aesthetically, culturally, politically, morally, and emotionally.

Married Gay Terrorists

I am investigating a language of national security, if you will, with questions that go well beyond whether or not queers will be permitted to marry. In fact, a point I must emphasize is that the Christian rhetoric swarming around the queer is a vague but enormously powerful language of “absolute” sovereignty. And this kind of talk is directed at the undesirable queer, who often functions as the rhetorical enemy of the state. For example, let’s quickly look at two statements of sovereign faith, articulated just a decade or so apart. In 2004, the successful conservative Christian Family Research Council, which defends “family, faith, and freedom” as the Judeo-Christian principles of a strong and solid culture, lists some core principles that queers, we are told, jeopardize. For all the focus on the family I already cited, this list should be familiar, but note the explicitly authoritative tenor of these statements:

God exists and is sovereign over all creation. He created human beings in His image. Human life is, therefore, sacred and the right to life is the most fundamental of political rights.

Life and love are inextricably linked and find their natural expression in the institutions of marriage and the family.

Government has a duty to promote and protect marriage and family in law and public policy.

The American system of law and justice was founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic.

American democracy depends upon a vibrant civil society composed of families, churches, schools, and voluntary associations.¹¹

The Family Research Council (FRC) has substantial clout in the GOP (it was started during the Reagan years, with many prominent members of the Republican Party). Its statements of faith are also quite typical of many mainstream religious-right organizations’ guiding principles, offering concise explanations about why many conservatives are still very opposed to the legal enfranchisement of queers in those institutions cast as most at risk: primarily families, churches, and schools. The religious ethic of the American system of law and justice, which relies on good, virtuous families drenched in the correct kind of faith, cannot be violated by substantial policy and legal gains made by queers. The strong words don’t really need much explanation—they are so authoritatively stated, they are so clear in the rightness of conviction.

Now, with these statements in mind, consider one 1993 speech, delivered during the height of Colorado’s Amendment 2 controversy (which had erupted near the end of the presidency of George Bush, Sr.). Audiences at the First Congregational Church in Colorado Springs heard Colorado for Family Values founder Kevin Tebedo argue:

1 submit to you today, to every one of you, this issue with Amendment 2 is not about homosexuality. And it’s really not about sex. It’s about authority. It’s about whose authority takes precedence in the society in which we live. Is it the authority of man, or is it the authority of God? . . . Now the authority of man would dictate that homosexuality is perfectly okay, that there is nothing wrong with it. The authority of God says no, that there is plenty wrong with homosexuality. And so I say to you today that Amendment 2 is about authority; it’s about whose authority gets to make the decision.¹²

We are not really worried about queers here or homosexuality per se. Instead, we are worried about power and control and who will assure that sovereignty, rule, power, and tradition reign in anything that tries to break the foundation, the law, upon which all God’s will rules—the traditional family. Note that although “man’s authority” is subordinate to God’s, this morality play is hardly about God’s will. We are told to be concerned with how God’s Word will continue to underwrite “man’s” word and his straight and traditional claims of authority. Absolute authority. Tebedo was invoking a jeremiadic speech, which articulated a desire for God’s authority to be brought into fuller authority through American law. Then American law could proclaim homosexuality as wrong and ban it from our proper, civil society. This desire uncovers the not-so-secret heart of sermons against queers: my natal country needs its queers, and needs them, me, terribly.

I believe we should think of religious language as a language of authority, as an instrument of sovereignty, because the current fight over queer rights has much to tell us about where contemporary politics seems to be disastrously and rapturously heading. Moreover, much of the force of this form of religious rhetoric comes from its ability to describe and situate queers as both external and internal to the nation. The Christian language of the jeremiad helps make queers America’s inside-outsiders, whose status as such helps not only win presidential elections, but something much more pernicious. Religious language, that is, serves the United States as it continues to evolve into a coercive, extralegal empire that needs enemies inside and outside its borders.

I might sound paranoid, but it does not seem coincidental that, in 2005, two major political issues that traversed both foreign and domestic arenas included the War on Terror and the battle for queer civil rights. Certainly the accidents of timing had something to do with these issues’ simultaneous emergence, but both of these issues have strong religious connotations, and both strike at the heart of what enables the consolidation of power in a mass-democratic society. The link between the two, which is sort of outlandish, is not far-fetched. Thomas Frank, in What’s the Matter with Kansas? offers this witty line: “Like...