“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
This statement may sound like the kind of homophobic vitriol that a hate-filled preacher would shout to a random guy with an earring forty years ago or perhaps a piece of “humor” from a more recent time that would be followed by the “it’s just a joke, bro” defense.
If that is what you thought, you would be wrong.
In reality, that was the fully serious argument put forth by Public Service Commissioner, former party chair and Secretary of State candidate Mike Francis, a Republican from District four, at a recent convention for the Louisiana state GOP.
Francis’ homophobia is not a revitalization of bigotry long dead. No, his views and motivations never went away. They have continued to fester in fundamentalist Christian and reactionary conservative circles in the state, even as polls show that most Louisianans now support policies like same-sex marriage.
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Case in point, a 2019 meeting of a teenage Republican organization in this very state attended by the author of this very column before his political conversion:
At this event, the newly inaugurated president of the chapter rose to give a speech to the assembled. It did not take long for him to decry the normalization of behaviors which he deemed “immoral.” Unsurprisingly, this list included homosexuality. This identity and activity, morally equivalent to heterosexuality, was grossly reduced to the level of pedophilia.
The justification? The answer is two-fold.
First, Francis has been emboldened by a concurring opinion from the Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade. In that concurrence, the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the Supreme Court should also “reconsider” decisions protecting the rights to same-sex marriage, contraception and the very act of gay sex.
Thomas’ motivation and the second of Francis’ justifications are one in the same: Christianity.
Actually, that is offensive to Christians. What Francis, Thomas and even that club’s former president are actually motivated by is the conflation of their interpretation of Christianity with their interpretation of the American national identity.
They believe that the traditional nuclear family, complete with heterosexuality and gender roles, is essential to what it means to be American. To violate these hegemonic bounds would be to violate something holy, sacred, divine. In other words, the United States is a “Christian country” founded on “Judeo-Christian values” for Christians.
This is the dictionary definition of Christian nationalism.
To fully understand the danger of this ideology, just look back to Francis’ original statement: “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
He was being deadly serious when he said that.
To people like him, Genesis is not merely poetry as it is to literary scholars or scripture as it is to the average Christian or Jew. No, it is history – equivalent to a theoretical photograph of the big bang (not that they believe in that).
This creationism is not just common in the Deep South; for many, it is common sense. It is the Gospel truth.
This belief is as absurd as flat earth theory, moon landing denialism and 9/11 trutherism. The difference is that there are not very many politicians trying to inject those absurdities into classrooms. For creationists, this is their holy mission, and they are willing to sacrifice the “sodomites” in their “patriotic” crusade.
Creationists want to instill Christian fundamentalism into public school curricula for the express purpose of increasing the power of Christian nationalism in broader society.
Not only will more students and future voters adhere to these ignorant and bigoted ideas but they will also view being creationist or homophobic as fundamental to being American and moral. Those that disagree or whose very being is disagreed with will be subjugated and thrown out of proper society for violating an essential covenant of the theocracy.
If any more convincing is necessary, think about the position that Francis is running for. The Secretary of State oversees our elections. The potential abuse of this office’s power could inhibit the people’s ability to counter his exclusion and extremism.
Right now, Mike Francis alone can really only make his fellow Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, an openly gay Democrat from District three, rather uncomfortable whenever they are in the same room together. The whole block of Christian nationalists across the state, though, can and will continue to make life as close to hell as possible for gay Louisianians. They even consider that to be a preview of the afterlife.
Matthew Pellittieri is a 19-year-old history and political science sophomore from Ponchatoula.
