There are two people I know of who are celebrating the death of Tammy Faye Messner.
One of them is Fred Phelps, patriarch of a lunatic religion cult. As soon as his inbred spawn can finish pecking out the words, Freds’s website will declare that Tammy Faye is burning in hell. We all know that Fred is an insane and hate-mongering bigot.
The other is Johnny Hildo, who apparently at some point in time registered here. He dropped this turd in her Cafe Society tribute thread, accusing her of financial fraud. Johnny Hildo, I’m sure, is important to someone somewhere.
Both Fred and Johnny hope that Tammy Faye spends eternity in hell being raped by Satan, but for very different reasons. Fred will say that she was a “fag enabler” and befriended gays when she could have condemned them. Johnny has said she defrauded people.
The difference between them is that Fred Phelps is correct, and Johnny is… misinformed. A grand jury decided that she had no role in Jim Bakker’s PTL scandal. No charges were ever brought against her.
Fred is right. Tammy Faye was an icon in the gay community, and a hero to them. She actively campaigned for the church to open its arms to the people whom she credited with lifting her spirits and giving her hope at a time when others spurned or ridiculed her.
There was not a judgmental bone in her body. She hosted a television talk show with Jim J Bullock and wrote feature articles for XY magazine. Gays, lesbians, and transgendered people flocked to her book signings and gushed about how much they loved her and how much she meant to them.
When she was on Surreal Life with porn star Ron Jeremy, they became best of friends, communicating regularly with one another until her death. Don’t misunderstand me. She never wavered in her faith or in her personal choices, but she never condemned anyone. She poured out her unconditional love to people who, like her, were spurned and rejected by others.
Ron Jeremy wrote of her:
Of all the friends I made on The Surreal Life, I probably had the best connection with Tammy Faye. Which was ironic, because we were the two people nobody expected to get along. She was an evangelist preacher and orthodox Christian, and I was a porn star. Not exactly a match made in heaven. But Tammy and I bonded. She recognized that I wasn’t such a bad guy after all, and though she never approved of my line of work, she respected me and always treated me fairly.Johnny Hildo, the only thing I know about you is that you have less credibility than Fred Phelps.
