The Grandma Agneses of the World

WARNING: 

Today I’m writing about The Real O’Neals.  I know.  I can almost hear some cries of indignation over the sound of eyes rolling.  I know it seems like I’ve become your one stop shop for commentary about this ABC sitcom.  I wasn’t going to blog about it anymore (at least for a while) but then I watched last night’s episode and I just can’t get some thoughts out of my head.

So if you’re tired of me blogging about The Real O’Neals, now’s your chance to click out of my blog.  Come back tomorrow and I’ll have something else for you.

Back to our irregularly scheduled blog post.

I don’t know if you’ve ever participated in a live Twitter conversation during a TV show but it’s quite an experience.  When you tweet during The Real O’Neals you not only get to connect with other fans of the show but pretty much the entire cast is there, sitting on the virtual couch, with all of the fans.  They crack jokes with the fans.  They give behind the scenes commentary to the fans.  And, most importantly, they support the fans.  I don’t think there’s been a week that’s gone by that fans haven’t tweeted their gratitude to cast members for validating them or helping them come out.  It’s powerful stuff.

Last night was episode 107 entitled “The Real Grandma.”  In short, Eileen (the terrifying and judgmental, very religious mother, played by Martha Plimpton) is visited by her mother (an even more terrifying, judgmental, and religious mother) played by the incredibly talented Frances Conroy of American Horror Story fame.  Eileen, who has always struggled for her mother’s approval, hides the fact that she and her husband, Pat (Jay R. Ferguson), are divorcing and that Kenny (Noah Galvin) is gay.   This doesn’t go over well with Kenny who eventually defies his mother and comes out to his grandmother by presenting her with a rainbow cake.

Grandma Agnes doesn’t take the news very well and announces to the family that Kenny has ruined cake and rainbows for her forever.  She also declares her intention to stay until “she saves Kenny’s soul.”

Meanwhile Kenny is pressuring his mother to admit to her mother that she’s planning to divorce Pat.  So, in order for Eileen to come out to her mother about the divorce, she plans a good old fashioned corned beef and cabbage dinner.  During the course of the meal, Grandma Agnes says to Kenny, “I know you think I’m a silly old woman and you’ve been mocking me and my beliefs.  But even if you don’t care what I think, you should care about what God thinks….You don’t accept that God doesn’t accept you.  He thinks you’re broken and I do too.”

The screen is then filled with Kenny’s face and you can see the shock and the pain these words have caused.  We hear Kenny doing a voice over, saying “I didn’t think anything grandma said could upset me, but I was wrong.”

My initial reaction was, “Oh, I’ve got to blog this!  This is exactly why I wrote what I wrote yesterday about One Million Moms!”  But, like I said, the ol’ blog has been pretty The Real O’Neals heavy of late and I was reluctant to do it. 

I finished the episode.  It has a spectacular ending.  I won’t give the details beyond saying that Grandma Agnes tries to force the family to go to church that evening.  The family ends up going, without Grandma Agnes and at Kenny’s suggestion.  Hold that thought.

If you’ve read many of the posts on my blog you will have noticed by now a strong theme in what I’ve shared:  Religion, over the centuries, has done horrible things to good people simply because the devotees of the religion subscribe to a superstitious view of the world, are legalistic about thingstheir holy books say without even actually knowingwhat those books say, or simply can’t make room in their worldview for continuous revelation ( the fact that God is still speaking despite the silence of biblical authors, namely through the vehicle of science).  As a result, religion, specifically Christianity (of which I am a practitioner), has killed people, maimed people, caused untold psychological damage to people…all because of something zealous adherents couldn’t understand and innocents can’t change.

When Agnes spoke to Kenny at the dining room table and declared that God could not accept Kenny because he was gay, I could feel the silence in every room in which this show was being watched.  I felt winded.  It may have just been a talented actress delivering a line to an emotive actor on the screen, but it was like a punch to the gut.  Why?  Because I don’t think there’s an LGBT person alive who hasn’t had someone they love or someone who loved them speak to them like this.  At some point in every LGBT person’s life a well-meaning but woefully ignorant loved one expresses this same concern:  God does not love you because you are too broken.

Here’s a newsflash, Grandma Agneses of the world:  In our Christian faith, it is precisely for the broken that Jesus came (Mark 2.17).  And it wasn’t to judge them, but to love them and bring them back into community despite the judgments and preconceived ideas of the righteous, holier-than-thou members of the greater faith community.  In other words, Grandma Agneses, Jesus came to bring the Kennys of the world back into the fold despite your objections.

And this is what’s so incredibly sad about the Grandma Agneses of the world and the One Million Moms of the world and the Focuses on the Family of the world and all of the North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee politicians of the world who have absolutely no idea what their Christian faith is all about.  It breaks my heart to see what these people do to innocent people in the crosshairs of their judgment but it breaks my heart more to know how far from the center of the Christian faith these people are.

This is why I wrote what I wrote yesterday about the OneMillion Moms organization.  Anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow view of what is right, moral, and acceptable to God is an affront to God and by extension them.  The problem is that the theology of these groups is ill-formed at best, handed down and institutionalized for hundreds of years.  The world has obviously changed and our understanding of the human condition has developed.  They simply can’t deal with the reality of the world we live in.  It’s easier for them to kick and scream and flail against change in an effort to make the world to conform to their expectations.  And, of course, the world pushes back, saying, “No, it’s time for you to change your expectations of the world.”  And upon hearing that, these arch-conservative, para-religious activist groups cry out that they are being victims of religious oppression. 

Disagreement is not oppression.  If you want to see real religious oppression, real religious persecution, I suggest visiting extremist countries where people are actually killed for their beliefs.  My stomach turned a long time ago when I heard about a little boy, about ten years old, who was a Christian.  When his master found out, he was driven out into the desert, his feet nailed to a board, and he was left there to die.  That is what I remember when I hear the likes of Kim Davis, Mike Huckabee, One Million Moms, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, Ted Cruz and all the others whine about their sense of religious persecution because they can’t seem to bully people with fear of divine judgment anymore.

So you remember that thought I told you to hang onto?  When I said that the O’Neal family ended up going to church anyway even without Grandma Agnes and her pressure?  It was Kenny’s suggestion.  “I’d still like to go to church.” he says.  I think this is what ultimately tipped the balance and brought me to the computer to write this entry, dear reader.  You see, throughout this ordeal of coming out and despite Grandma Agnes’ declaration of God’s judgment, Kenny still feels that connection to his faith. 

Too many LGBT people have been driven away from their faith because of the Grandma Agneses of the world.  In their view it’s the LGBT people who have left the church, probably because “they just can’t endure the reminder of how broken they are.”  In reality, it’s the church that has left the LGBT people.  Even if I subscribed to the view that being gay was somehow sinful (which I don’t and I can explain why in another post if anyone wants to know—just ask), where did the authors of the four biblical Gospels always show Jesus?  Not in the fancy synagogues hanging with the Grandma Agneses of his time.  He was always with the people that the Grandma Agnes crowd deemed to sinful to hang around.  So, Christians, if you’re going to say you follow Christ (which you do when you claim the title), maybe you should spend time with the people you think are sinners and love them as Jesus did instead of sitting astride your high horse looking down on the broken you think God can’t accept.

When a woman suffers verbal and emotional abuse from her husband and leaves, most of us say, “We support you!  No one should have to endure that!”  When LGBT people suffer verbal and emotional abuse from the Church and leave, most people don’t make the connection.

We need to make that connection.  If not in a religious sense and context (because, again, I recognize the plurality of belief and no belief that exist in the world), then just in a decent human being sense and context. 

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The Fosters and Faith

Have you watched The Fosters?

It is a family oriented show for modern families which debuted on what was ABCFamily in 2013.  It’s now one of the flagship series for Freeform, the latest incarnation of what started as the Family Channel back in cable’s hayday.

I remember the buzz about it.  I hadn’t looked into it too much.  But because I knew a lot of people connected with the foster system I thought I would check it out.  So, picture it:  The premiere episode.  We meet a lesbian couple—a white cop and a biracial educator from a charter school—Brandon, the biological son of the cop, who, by the way, is still working with her ex-husband, the father of her child, on the police force, and the couple’s two adopted Latino children. Jesus and Mariana.  Then we meet Callie, a child they literally rescue from the absurdity of a foster system that has grown so large and so underfunded.  Eventually we meet Callie’s brother, Jude, who falls in love with one of his athletic classmates at the charter school and begins to identify as gay. 

Like I said:  A family oriented show for modern families. 

It was a dynamic premise for a forty something minute TV series.  There was always something going on relationship-wise with the kids, parenting-wise for Steff and Lena (the couple who have taken responsibility for this brood), and identity-wise for everyone.  The show has dealt with topics such as racism, addiction, sexuality, faithfulness, healthy boundaries, mental health, cancer, and…religion.

This poor family has dealt with more in three years than many families deal with in eighteen. 

And that’s where I’ve kind of settled on the show this season.  It just seemed that everything the writing team was throwing at the family was just too much.  Not unbelievable because everyone watching could identify with the struggles and challenges.  It was just becoming overwhelming.  I began to be afraid that either the writers had committed characters to storylines that were becoming weights around the neck of the show or…worse, they were trying to be too many things to too many people and failing everyone in the process.  This is why TV shows have “bibles” that set boundaries on characters and possibilities. 

To me, this season has felt less like a family oriented show for modern families and more like a telenovela of the Mexican variety:  Entertaining but way over the top in storyline and dramatic presentation.   

But then they aired the season finale last night and I remembered why I was first drawn to this show.

So after a season of melodramatic storylines, a painful episode featuring the culmination of a story arc about a Romeo and Juliet musical written by writers who had apparently never read Romeo and Juliet, and a few plotlines that seemed to go on and on like this current election cycle, driving us to a point where we really don’t care about Callie and Brandon and their poor boundaries….we’re punched in the gut with the reality of the foster care system:  Kids being placed in homes that are unqualified to take care of kids and in which the kids end up dead. 

This affects Jude profoundly because right before we learn that Jack, the foster kid who we’ve gotten to know this season, was murdered by the same foster father who had abused Callie and Jude, we see Jack kissing Jude.  Jack later confides in Callie that he felt it was a mistake because he’s not attracted to Jude because he, Jack, is straight.  Jack never has the chance to confess this to Jude. 

So the episode opens with a funeral/prayer service/informal gathering on the beach where Jude is delivering a sermon/eulogy.  This caught my interest right away because it was actually thoughtfully done and the words Jude was using to commend Jack to God’s care were words I’ve heard too many times in real funeral services.  This polished eulogy was coming from someone who has never really struggled with religion in the show’s run.  Jude has never explored it, questioned it, struggled with it.  But his sermon was spot on theologically.  In real life, if Jude was an actual person, one could clearly see that he was taking this seriously and had committed a great deal of thought and research to his reflection. 

So, as a student of religion and theology as well as psychology, I’m turning this scene over and over in my head for the rest of the episode.  I’m wondering where it came from and where it could be going because it was so unpredictable in a show that has become too predictable this season.

Fast forward to the last ten minutes of the show or so.  So, yeah, if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know anymore, maybe you should stop reading now.  This is your warning.

Through the episode we see Jude talking with one of his female classmates and friends.  At one point we hear Jude expressing that maybe he’s not into guys.  Which, of course, the friend picks up on right away since she’s been crushing on Jude for about two seasons now.  But toward the end of the show we see Callie confronting Jude on his interest in the female friend.  Callie is confused because Jude has identified as gay pretty much since they came to this foster home which ended up adopting them.  Jude’s response?

“Maybe I’m not supposed to be gay.  I’ve loved two guys and God has taken them both away.”

I don’t know how other people heard that line but this is how I heard that line.  “I loved a guy named Connor and he moved away and our relationship ended.  I was falling in love with a guy named Jack and he was murdered.  I’m going to interpret this as a sign.  Maybe God is trying to tell me I need to get back on the straight path.”

I write about this a lot.  We story the events in our lives in an attempt to make sense of the things that we can’t explain.  When it comes to tragedy, as a rule, people will cite providential intervention as the reason things happen.  They will interpret that intervention as meaning this or that.  It’s how the individual copes.  I know that.

But here’s what I also know.  My theology informs me that God does not cause horrible things to happen.  God doesn’t need to.  Human beings do that well enough on our own.  God didn’t kill Jack in The Fosters.  The broken system operated by human beings killed Jack.  God certainly doesn’t punish people; that’s superstitious bullshit that should have died out with witch trials.  And God does not take people away from us or tear people away tragically to give us a message.   (I'm mentioning this in the middle of this review of The Fosters because I can't seem to stop reminding people of these important truths--especially a community and a subset of a community who tend to be victimized by such backward Christian nonsense.)

All of a sudden my interest in The Fosters has returned.  What sucks is that it’s from one of the most realistic characters that we don’t get to see too much of because of all the “kids” on the show the actor who portrays Jude is a kid and child labor laws impact his storylines.  But this is what The Fosters needed, I think.  A step away from the over-the-top-never-going-to-end drama of Callie and Brandon, or Jesus and his search for identity which, with a new actor, focused in a direction the character has never looked before (namely his birth father), or Mariana and all her teenage girl drama. 

Once again the show comes back to Jude. 

I don’t know where the writers are going to go with this but it’s pretty clear that in the time that passed between the horrible episode featuring Romeo and Juliet: The Musical and Jack’s tragic death and the season finale with the appearance of Preacher Jude, someone has obviously influenced Jude’s thinking on sexuality and God.  I really hope this is explored more next season because these are very real issues younger folks in the LGBTQ community struggle with.  I think that’s where they’re going considering the kiss Jude shares with his female classmate and the weird smile he has on his face afterwards. 

What do you think? 

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