Apocalyptus Interruptus: Christian Fundamentalists, Sodomy, and The End

Summary

‘Those poor, dumb fairy demonstrators… If they weren't out there, I'd have to invent them’

(Revd Jerry Falwell to Dr Mel White).

No observer of American religiosity was surprised when, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on 11 September, 2001, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson concurred in the cause of those events: God had lifted from America his protecting arm. Although the Almighty tends to be, if you read the Bible carefully, more concerned with the oppression of the weak (widows, orphans, aliens in the land) and various kinds of economic and political corruption, Falwell and Robertson speculated that an Unholy Trinity of feminists, civil libertarians and homosexuals ranked high among the reasons for God's wrath. Previously, in the summer of 1998, Robertson issued an apocalyptic warning to the officials and citizens of Orlando, Florida, reminding them of their vulnerability to hurricanes and even suggesting that they could become ground-zero for an asteroid. What occasioned this prophetic utterance was evidence in Orlando for its tolerance of homosexuality. Disney World had become, since earlier in the 1990s, the unofficial gathering place for Queer Middle America on one day each June; the Disney corporation permitted, not sponsored, this ‘Gay Day’ event, but the corporation had further infuriated Southern Baptists by including health benefits for same-sex domestic partners in its employment policies. Adding further insult to the Almighty, the city of Orlando had permitted queer-national rainbow flags to festoon downtown streetlights for an annual Gay Pride Parade.