The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) takes us back to the golden age of televangelism, when the big names were world-famous celebrities with huge political and social influence. They had dinner at the White House. They were parodied on Saturday Night Live.
1. Jerry Falwell (Vincent D'Onofrio) turned his Moral Majority into a seething- ground for anti-gay hatred. He blamed them for everything. An airplane crash in Peru -- must have been some gays on board. Rise in teen pregnancy -- gay rights make our kids think they can do anything they want. Your basement is flooded -- God is punishing you for not hating gays enough. "A homosexual will kill you as soon as look at you."
2. Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) proclaimed that God was punishing all of the gays by giving them AIDS, but they wanted to infect as many straight people as possible, with the goal of destroying society before becoming extinct. They had special rings that, when you shook their hand, would prick you with a little of their blood, so you would catch AIDS and die. They would spit on your food or cough on you on purpose
3. Jimmy Swaggart (Jay Huguley) said that he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically. He saw his huge tv ministry decimated after two prostitution scandals, in spite of his famous "I have sinned" speech.
4. Oral Roberts managed to build a whole homophobic university with sleazy fundraising techniques, like claiming that if viewers didn't send in $8,000,000, God would kill him.
More after the break