Was Tammy Faye Baker really the LGBT hero the Eyes of Tammy Faye makes her out to be?

She's been considered a gay icon for years. You're just looking to attack Jessica Chastain (And feminists. And "wokeness"). Go away, Republican trolls.

She was a trailblazer. Not only was she the first televangelist to interview and treat a gay AIDS victim with respect on national tv, she was one of the first talk show hosts, religious or secular, to do so.

People can debate what she knew or not about the grifting, but she truly felt love for LGB people, especially those with AIDS, and didn't judge them.

Yes, she invented drag and threw the first brick at Stonewall.

so now not liking chastain and her preachy twitter makes you a repug? ok r1. I guess I need to re-register my party affiliation.

Tammy called out the Moral Majority for their hypocrisy in dealing with the AIDS crisis, and shamed them for treating AIDS patients like crap. She had her issues, but she practiced what she preached regarding treating people equally

It was no surprise that they soon would get taken down by the same sector. Not saying they were completely innocent, but that whole group was sleaze personified in the 80's. Jim and Tammy were the fall guys for a whole corrupt industry.

That does sound a bit revisionist and 2020s. Was Jim closeted? If she cared, it was only to save her own skin.

They really do find a hook for every fish nowadays, don't they?

Here is the actual interview between Tammy Faye and Rev. Steve Pieters.

[quote]Was Jim closeted? If she cared, it was only to save her own skin.

It's tragic how Q-ANON, conspiracy theories are now used as a means of attempting a legitimate arugment.

R8 Allegations that Jim Bakker wasn't straight isn't new.

R8, fuck you, you lazy imbecile. I'm so tired of the idiots on this site. Where are the actual intelligent people who remember any piece of our history and pop culture before trump and Britney Spears? And btw, I'm 36. I actually remember things I've read and heard. Not just false dogmas uneducated blist actresses sell for unearned Oscars.

[quote] so now not liking chastain and her preachy twitter makes you a repug? ok [R1]. I guess I need to re-register my party affiliation.

Why do you follow her on Twitter if you don't like her? Are you retarded or do you have no self control? Judging by your punctuation, the answer is: retarded.

Tammy Faye was complex, but she did have some principles worth acknowledging and she insisted on treating people with AIDS with respect and compassion. She would probably also tell you that gay sex was a sin, but she could separate AIDS from sexuality and she placed compassion above other concerns. She was also, for years, a grifting televangelist so you might want to hate her, but there is still much to respect in her.

Tammy Faye was one of those "hate the sin, but love the sinner" people, but in her case she really meant it and practiced it genuinely and compassionately. She believed it was up to her God to judge and not her. If you added up all the bad and the good things about her, she still comes out on the sunny side of the equation rather than the dark side. So, I'm Team Tammy Faye.

She was both perhaps sympathetic to those dying of AIDs and aware that she and her husband's vast wealth was from scamming.

Where’s the evidence that she had intent to scam or grift? There’s an assumption that the wife is in on the husband’s crimes, but people don’t blame Bill Clinton, the husband, for all the scandals that Hillary has masterminded.

[quote]Where’s the evidence that she had intent to scam or grift?

Hush, you tiresome thing.

PTL, or Praise the Lord, was widely also known as Pay the Lady. All you had to do was watch a few installments of their on-going money beg to know they were squeezing old people, infirm people, naive people, and squeeze them hard with guilt and the glory of God. With the Social Security money of their gullible followers, Tammy Faye lived in luxury. Even her dog had an air-conditioned dog house.

There's your evidence, you pustule. It's all on video tape. The whole world saw it. Everyone but you. Where's the evidence? Where are your glasses? Where is your brain?

She's very much an interesting character study. There were many reasons to dislike her, but somehow, someway, she ended up being a very likeable person to many people. I've long had a soft spot for for Tammy Faye. I detest this whole all good or all bad judgement that has been going on for years.

I find it ironic that there is such a push for reality in various forms of media, yet most of it uses black and white thinking in terms of good vs evil, but real life is not like that at all in terms of dealing with other people or various situations. I detest it.

The lyrics to the Facts of Life theme song carries more depth than what we're being fed at this point. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have, the facts of life." And so on.

r11 I don't follow her on twitter. I read the posts/complaints about her twitter feed on DL quite often though.

In the film Baker is actively having relationships with men.

(they do show that Tammy was the first to have an affair though so she it isn't completely a white washed version of her life I guess)

TFB was one of those people who were both great and horrible at the same time, depending on what aspect of her personality you decide to focus on. Yes, she showed compassion to gay people during the worst of the AIDS crisis but she was fully in on her Jim's grift and benefitted from it substantially.

R15 There is also the fact that she was an Evangelical woman in the 1970s/80s, it would not be ridiculous to expect that she left all financial matters to her husband. That would be the norm for the time. Look at all the famous women who were married to men that destroyed them financially. He probably told her their money came from her albums and advertising and that the pledges/tithes were all going to ministry work.

The money part was a bit confusing in the film. Her mother strongly disapproves of them making money from "the lord's work." (But even she gets seduced by a fur coat they give her.)

R15 so do you think it was Hillary who invited Ghislaine Maxwell to Chelsea's wedding?

I've watched the interview at R7. IIRC, Tammy said that she was watching TV and saw a story about a man whose family and friends abandoned him and wouldn't touch (hug) him b/c of AIDS. That story hit a nerve with Tammy. She was extremely compassionate on a person-to-person level. She also had some balls to speak out at a time that ppl with AIDS were pariahs.

That said, she was greedy. She married not one, but two, convicted grifters. She may not have been the mastermind, but she was loving the swag. Compassion for ripped-off people? No.

Finally, she was colorful, hilarious, and had a sense of humor. She was made for TV.

What happens if you call one of those prayer lines?

There is one where Franklin Graham asks people to call in and people will pray with you. Do they then subtly work in a request for money?

I though Andrew Garfield was perfectly cast as the bisexual Jim Bakker.

Jim Bakker does seem gay to me. So why was he harassing Jessica Hahn?

R26, maybe he was trying to prove something to himself that he was straight?

Hahn is barely mentioned in the film oddly.

R24 I don't know about now that Franklin is running things, but I called the Billy Graham one and they never asked for money but they did want your address to send your a book or something. But, it was really to get you on their mailing list. After that you'd get something every few months with a fundraising plea but not over the top. Graham was never considered to be like the other televangelists. He didn't live extravagantly, well, yes, but not ostentatious. And, there was never a whiff of financial nor sexual scandal around him. Part of that is that unlike the others, he wasn't on everyday or even every week. He was on tv only a few times a year as a special. He was the Bob Hope of televangelists.

thanks r29 interesting

Interesting, R29. I grew up with someone who ended up working for Billy Graham in the 90s, in the graphic arts department. I was surprised knowing how he was when we were younger. He wasn't a wild child, but pretty different in his views, and a very interesting person. He had nothing but glowing praise for the organization and Billy Graham.

So people point out that she benefited from the scams, but no one has actual evidence that she herself had intent to scam anyone?

R32 she saw, heard nor spoke no evil.

My grandmother regularly sent part of her Social Security income to that mutherfucking Oral Roberts.

Thanks for chiming in, Ruth Madoff. I was just thinking about you for some reason.

She was anti-gay marriage.

Tammy & Jim need the Ryan Murphy treatment

They also need the Bill Kurtis treatment.

And what about me R35?

R36 was she a Bette Midler fan?

I lived in SC before the scandal. Yes, TFB knew where the money was coming from and how it enabled her rich lifestyle. But we all knew it too. There were no babes in the woods on that front.

But at a time when almost no one - religious or secular - wanted anything to do with “fags with AIDS”, TFB did. Along with ET and very few others.

I went with a contestant to the Miss Gay America pageant in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1983 and we had to cross a picket line of PTL members to get into the venue which was right across the street from our hotel. At one point, bunch of queens were on the second-floor balcony screaming for them to send Tammy Faye over.

How do you like Jessica’s cover of Disco Jesus?

R31 Yeah, I wonder how he felt about the fact that his childhood home, had been bought and moved to Heritage USA. It has since been moved from that site to the wonderful Billy Graham Library.

Here is Tammy Faye singing Disco Jesus!

[quote]Yes, she invented drag and threw the first brick at Stonewall.

Perhaps the time has come to free the person from the binary and admit it: [italic]they were born Timmy Jay![/italic]

[quote] TFB knew where the money was coming from and how it enabled her rich lifestyle. But we all knew it too.

Yes, obviously everyone knows where the money came from. That’s not evidence that she had an intention to scam anyone. The notion that she was a criminal mastermind is absurd. It’s very unlikely with her naïveté and simplemindedness that she understood what was going on.

What was going on actually? Baker was stealing from the church?

R48 They were building Heritage USA, which was supposed to be the Christian Disney World, people bought timeshares that were never built and everything fell apart. There were allegations of skimming and kickbacks, basically instead of construction it was going in to the pockets of the Jim Bakker and associates.

Timeshares (construction completed), to begin with, are sketchy. And they couldn't even deliver on the sketchy timeshare.

[quote]There’s an assumption that the wife is in on the husband’s crimes, but people don’t blame Bill Clinton, the husband, for all the scandals that Hillary has masterminded.

Go to bed, Donald.

Even the best person in the world can be corrupted by mountains of money. She may have pretended she didnt know,but she also very much enjoyed the diamonds,furs and over the top living . Werent they broke after the dust settled ? I mean broke broke,not millions still in the bank but not billions broke.

R52 I know a woman. She very much enjoyed her lifestyle and all the money her husband brought in. Until, all of a sudden he was arrested for running a Ponzi scheme. She honestly had no idea that was what he was doing, yes she enjoyed the nice cars and expensive trips, but she really believed he was legitimately earning that money. And, like the Bakkers, they were left completely broke. For some reason, unlike TFB, she has stuck with her husband. But, she now has to work on a factory floor to make ends meet.

Tammy knew what it was like to be discriminated against by so-called good Christian people. After her mother married her second husband, their local congregation told her she was a fallen woman and was no longer allowed to serve as the church pianist.

[quote] Werent they broke after the dust settled ? I mean broke broke,not millions still in the bank but not billions broke.

I don't know what "broke broke" means, but I saw something on YouTube about Tammy, after the 2nd husband got locked up in jail. IIRC, she was living in Palm Springs. She was also on RuPaul, talking about how she bought her clothes in Chinatown. I think she tried to play up how "poor" she was, but I think she still had money coming from somewhere.

R54 They also were unkind about her makeup and style, evangelical preacher's wives were supposed to be modest and plain.

Eyes of Tammy Faye just dropped on HBOmax.....!!.......2 HOURS and 6 Mins......!!.....Grab my popcorn.....

The word is "gay" OP, not "LGBT".

R11 = Jessica’s PR manager

Unless you were around in the 80's, you just can't realize how revolutionary it was for someone in the media spotlight to take a stand about AIDS like TFB did. Practically no one was encouraging people to hug AIDS patients and treat them with dignity and respect back then. It was terrible how PTL swindled so many people out of so much money, but she was very brave to speak out like she did.

Always seemed a little opportunistic to me, but it’s the gesture that counts I guess.

R60- I agree. I had just graduated and started working as a nurse. It is difficult for people who did not witness the beginning of the " Gay cancer" soon followed by " Gay plague." to grasp how very angry people were. Far from having empathy for these young men dying a frightening, horrifically painful, lonely and isolated death, people were terrified of getting it and angry at the gay community for unleasing a plague. These beautiful young souls rarely had anyone to comfort them as they were dying. People were afraid to touch them, people who should have known better, and that includes medical doctors and nurses. When I would care for them I would try to touch them. Hold their hand, gently rub their arm, etc. If any one group of people ever needed a human touch more I have yet to see it. They would gasp in shock and fear. For me. They did not want to infect me. I'm truly crying as I type this, my apologies. So yes, TFB was a GD angel in my eyes. So was Princess Diana and ET for the same reason. I could and did care for, sit with, and touch aids patients all day but I could not reach the public as they had the platform to do. What they did mattered. What they did took guts. The Reagans should have been hung by the fucking neck. Piss on their graves. Just look around you at the depraved greed and corrupt, antisocial behavior. TFB was a tame kitten by todays standards. But never underestimate the bravery that it took to publicly support the gay community and aids patients at that time.

We watched the film a couple of days ago. It was okay (though Grafield was amazing as Bakker.) We then watched the original documentary, and what stood out was how smart and savvy Tammy Faye was. Which led me to believe that she knew a lot more than she was willing to admit. I do believe that Bakker didn't take advantage of Hahn, and was railroaded for that, though he definitely deserved to go to prison for all the other stuff.

R61 Except, what she did when she did it, wouldn't/didn't help her. Embracing AIDS patients and respectfully interviewing an openly gay pastor was not something an Evangelical televangelist would do if they were being opportunistic, because your flock/audience wouldn't like it.

Thank you R62.

Its funny,but no matter how much you think you've learned to live with the memories of those dark,dark years,posts like R62 makes it all so raw and real again you cant help but cry. I miss so many people still.

[quote] So was Princess Diana and ET for the same reason

I don't mean to disrespect a heartfelt post, but does "ET" stand for extra-terrestrial?

[quote] I don't mean to disrespect a heartfelt post, but does "ET" stand for extra-terrestrial?

Entertainment Tonight. Some people really loved that show.

Thanks for your story R62 and for all that you did. Nurses like you are heroic.

R66 = Such tragic days. .....

This is a beautiful video....For anyone who needs a melancholy moment.....

ET is Elizabeth Taylor (minus all of her married names, of course)

Yes, ET stands for Liz Taylor.

R70, R71, R72, R73

Thanks.

I hope when Oscar nominations are announced Chastain puts on her face and cries like Tammy Faye when she doesn’t get a nomination - even though the tasteless SAG Nominating Committee will have led her on with a nomination (between all the other noms for TV’s Law and Order).

Just watched the film and the documentary. I was teenager when the scandal/takedown happened and didn’t really pay much attention to it, other than thinking they deserved what they got since my elderly aunt gave WAY too much money to them.

I think TFB had a good heart and truly cared for people. To a point. She wasn’t so naive to not know the money was fishy.

Chastain was pretty good, but it sort of seemed to end abruptly. Nothing about the second husband, even though they had him in the film, played by hottie Sam Jaeger. The actor playing the music producer she fucks was hot, too.

No.

How did I not know there was a 1990 TV movie about the Bakkers starring Kevin Spacey and Bernadette Peters????

Finally, a perfect role for Bernadette!

R78 Her singing was the best part. Spacey's Jim Bakker comes off as Frank Underwood the early years. Which isn't surprising, PTL was located only about an hour from the famous Gaffney Big Peach featured in House of Cards.

Chastain must be stopped!!! Rise up and fight this fraud!!!!

Chastain is a contender. Major Oscar sniffer. I hope she accepts her award with her Tammy face on.

"Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and look like shit."

I remembered my mom loved to watch TBN all the time and we were Evangelical Christians who went to a nondenominational church. I can't forget seeing all those flamboyant gay ass televangelists like Paul Crouch, Joseph Prince, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, etc and their Peggy Bundy-looking wives who had tons of caked one makeup, fake tits, jewelry and stiletto heels begging for money. What is the difference between them and gangsters with their tarted up wives?

Who looked more drag queenish, Tammy Faye or Jan Crouch?

Op that was not a biopic it was a flick based upon a bio pic. Watch the original documentary the eyes of Tammy Faye with Tammy Faye.

The documentary...