Tammy Faye Turns in Her Promissory Notes

Agnostic, atheist, Christian, Jew, or Muslim, you couldn't help but be touched by the glimmer of light behind Tammy Faye Messner's eyelashes.

Tammy Faye believed in God. She was a girl's girl, raised to be the perfect Donna Reed wife, and she was, twice. Tammy Faye's passion for life overflowed from every enthusiastic pore. She helped both her husbands attain their dreams and stood by them during their downfalls.

Tammy Faye had an over-the-top Joan Crawford face. Like Crawford she was shorter than you would expect, measuring less than five feet. She grew up watching the great screen stars of the 'forties and 'fifties, admiring their glamorous lives and bigger-than-life personas. Tammy Faye believed a star should behave like a star. She exuded a Hickory-Hollywood quality whenever she was in public.

Tammy Faye would call her beloved bible "God's word," then hand you a copy she had autographed herself -- that was Tammy Faye. She wore pain for a moment and optimism for a lifetime. Her brand wasn't all religion -- it was all Tammy Faye.

Tammy knew the power of television. Her famous tear-filled tales were always wrapped in bunny-and-rainbow endings. Long before Oprah's famous on-air tours of her closet, Tammy Faye proudly lived the good life on TV. She talked openly about some of her favorite possessions, thanking the good lord for her luxuries while reassuring her flock that she NEEDED none of it. Her God had been the one to spoil her; who were we to judge?

Her wacky comments often left viewers wondering what planet she was on, or what she was drinking from her coffee cup. Years later she rehabbed in Palm Springs for prescription drug abuse, but no one blamed Tammy Faye. She was swallowing what she needed to be the dutiful wife of a white-collar criminal.

Tammy Faye became a friend to everyone, including the gay community. Relatively early in the AIDS epidemic she welcomed a patient onto her afternoon chat show "Tammy Faye's House Party." She had no room for biblical intolerance. After television had abandoned her, she appeared routinely at Gay Pride festivals. The moralists had no place for her evolving kindnesses; they christened her a loose cannon. She didn't seem to care. Her world was intact; Tammy Faye provided no fuel to the right wing politicos for their fires of damnation.

From Bush's campaign trail to the White House, he and his brain, Karl Rove, have attempted to turn America into a nation fearful of homosexuals, and just about everyone else. Hateful rhetoric frightened voters into limiting the rights of gay America during the last presidential election. God, they argue, will not bless America's future if Americans treat gay people fairly.

Pat Robertson invokes an anti-homosexual line on his money-grubbing television show. This blowhard can be found in virtually every television market whining his way toward hell. Too often, he hits a news cycle when he stutters messages he says God has given him about America's future. Legions of elderly Americans send Robertson millions of dollars annually hoping to earn their heavenly afterlife. It's insulting to imagine the generation that saved the world from Nazi Germany would need Pat Robertson to buy them their way into heaven.

When Ronald Reagan deregulated television in the 1981, he opened up the floodgates to scores of preachers looking to buy their time across the airwaves. Spin the dial any latenight, and you'll find scores of forced faces with phony smiles selling their godly promises of redemption and peace.

Peter Popoff was debunked on The Tonight Show back in the late eighties as an earpiece-wearing faith healer. He quickly retreated from his scam, declaring bankruptcy then disappearing. He's back on television today selling packets of "Miracle Spring Water" to his desperate viewers. Popoff says it's free, but for the miracle to work, you must follow his instructions to the letter. Popoff's ridiculous directives include sending him a check that you've sprinkled with a salt and some of his "Miracle Spring Water."

Don Stewart's late-night promise of salvation comes via his "green prosperity prayer handkerchief." Stewart offers his desperately hopeful audience a thicker wallet through a piece of "anointed" cloth. He implies if you place his magic green rag in a wallet, it will draw money. Watching ten minutes of his broadcast is infuriating. His sales pitch is like a tax on the poorest subsidizing the most ungodly. In the Old West such snake oil salesmen would have been hanged, but today we offer them tax-exempt status.

The recent death of Jerry Falwell was welcomed news to many compassionate Americans. He was an intolerable man. Falwell famously said, "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals, it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." If evil does exist as a thinking force, it installed Falwell into his powerful position. Falwell blasted through the constitutional separation of church and state, contributing nothing good to either one.

This brand of religious hypocrisy is a far cry from the kinder, gentler approach Tammy Faye chose. Over the last twenty years she proved that reaching people through love and acceptance is always the better way. Her final appearance on "Larry King Live," just two days before she died, confirmed her steadfast faith in God. There she was -- emaciated, within days of her Earthly end, still spouting optimism. That's what she did best. Tammy Faye had good news to share with us right up until her last breath.