Whither the "Holy Rollers"?

Two media events last week bolstered the observations of some that Christian conservatives?at least when it comes to the issue of homosexuality?are on a bit of a losing streak, from the rough-and-tumble landscape of politics to the fast-and-furious world of network television. Yes, even at the Fox News Channel. In the same year in which the Catholic Church came under fire for suggesting a ban on gays in the priesthood and evangelicals took a whipping for trying to ban a book about the Koran at a North Carolina university, two different prominent public figures on opposite coasts seemed to realize?on the same day?that gay-bashing might have a loyal audience but in the end it ain't a big winner.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon, as conservative as they come and trailing Democratic Gov. Gray Davis badly in the polls, suddenly decided homosexuals aren't so bad after all. Having courted the religious right for months?he'd filled out Christian groups' questionnaires and got straight A's?he flip-flopped completely, making an urgent run for the center as the general election comes into full swing. Simon said, among other things, that he'd support Gay Pride Day if elected. The news sent the Rev. Lou Sheldon from the Traditional Values Coalition into something of an epileptic fit, ranting that he was "misled and conned" by Simon, who'd given his word against "support for the homosexual agenda."

Meanwhile, on the very same day, in the studios of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television on 6th Ave. in New York, Bill O'Reilly was trying to fend off the angry mob at Concerned Women For America. Mr. Conservative TV himself got into a pickle with the far right over statements he made in an interview with the Advocate that hit the stands this week. He came out in favor of gay adoptions, said that the U.S. military is "homophobic," defended gay-inclusive antidiscrimination laws and called antigay religious conservatives "holy rollers" and "fanatics." That was enough to make Sandy Rios of CWFA wax theological: "The Bible says that my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Bill is an exemplary example of the American Christian who does not know what God's word said, he does not know."

Stephen Bennett, CWFA's resident "ex-gay" spokesperson, was less forgiving, questioning O'Reilly's Catholic credentials entirely: "I think that many Catholics across this nation as well as the world are offended by Bill O'Reilly claiming he's an Irish Catholic." (I can't wait to hear what my newest e-mail buddy, William Donohue at the Catholic League?a sometime O'Reilly guest?has to say about that one.)

Of course, neither man has truly become a gay rights advocate of any sort, and in the case of Simon I wouldn't trust the supposed turnaround if my life depended on it?and if you're a gay Californian, yours does. For Simon to all of a sudden cozy up to gays after courting their fiercest foes only days before is political opportunism at its baldest. And some of Simon's supposedly pro-gay pronouncements have rather hilarious caveats designed to somehow placate critics on the other side. He says he's in favor of domestic partnership laws, for example, only if they're not based on sexual orientation but rather on any relationship of any kind between two people. "What happens if my brother and I...why couldn't we be domestic partners, if we both lost our wives?" he said in a radio interview.

Sure, there are few deluded gays who will actually go for this closeted approach?gay Republicans have Simon headlining a Mary Cheney-hosted fundraiser already?but for most it looks pretty pathetic. At this point gays and lesbians don't need or want to creep in through the back door. For Simon, it's a lose-lose proposition because most conservative Christians will see right through it as well, which will surely keep them from rushing out to the polls on Election Day. Still, this kind of desperate shift underscores, at least in terms of a gubernatorial race in Blue State California, that intolerance toward gays is seen as an even bigger loser than political hypocrisy.

O'Reilly, meanwhile, also seems to be trying to play both sides. Certainly he wants his top-rated The O'Reilly Factor to continue growing, and he knows that old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone homophobia isn't going to help. But, just like a Republican politician, he surely doesn't want to alienate his base audience of conservatives too much either. So, for example, he said that though he won't try to stop same-sex marriages, he does think it's "wrong." And in response to the attacks from CWFA he did a segment on his show last week that seemed designed to assuage Christian conservatives: he explained that, though he believes everyone should be treated equally, he does think that gay pride parades and public displays of affection are pretty gross. He then replayed a segment from two months ago in which he berated New York gay activists Ann Northrop and Andy Humm in a discussion about gay parades. It was classic, nasty gay-bashing, and, in fact, Northrop rightly called him "a bigot" to his face.

The reason the Advocate interview became news, making its way into the conservative Washington Times and forcing some Christian leaders to respond, was because John Aravosis, an About.com columnist, received an advance copy, played up the choicest quotes and taunted Christian-right leaders. Perhaps O'Reilly would just as soon have let it all ride out unnoticed so that he could technically say he was not antigay and appease certain viewers even as he stokes homophobia on his show once in a while, boosting ratings among other viewers.

Whatever the reasons, O'Reilly clearly wanted to distance himself from what he called the "fanatics" and "holy rollers," and that is interesting. Back in January, when I dubbed Christian conservatives "The Real American Taliban," I took a beating from many, and was pretty alone in saying so, even among liberal columnists at the time. But only nine months later, perhaps as we've all thought more and more about religious fanaticism in the aftermath of 9/11, we're hearing a similar sentiment from various quarters. Last week, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman focused on the controversy in North Carolina.

"The ruckus being raised by conservative Christians over the University of North Carolina's decision to ask incoming students to read a book about the Koran?to stimulate a campus debate?surely has to be one of the most embarrassing moments for America since Sept. 11," he observed. "Why? Because it exhibits such profound lack of understanding of what America is about, and it exhibits such a chilling mimicry of what the most repressive Arab Muslim states are about." Maybe over the past year, as we looked long and hard at the enemy, we started to see just a little bit too much of ourselves.