Throwback Thursday (Regretfully) Remembers Jimmy Swaggart

July 10, 2025
HANK ORSO

Well, it's time to look back at some gay-ish history for this week's Throwback Thursday. And with the recent passing of anti-LGBT 80s televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. His hypocritical ilk were indicative of the atmosphere many of us came of age in, and endured. His reputation was diminished by sex scandals, but naturally, his flock forgave.

Yer boy Hank here has to keep in mind that sometimes we have to remember the bad along with the good. And as Bettie Davis once famously said about Joan Crawford on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson: "My mother always told me to speak good of the dead. Joan is dead. Good!"

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by John Smalls (@johnhsmalls)

Swaggart was a textbook case of hypocritical religious piety, 80s era greed, sex scandal, and public displays of self-flagellation and apology. All the while, though his reputation slipped, his followers remained supportive for the most part. And yes, he was rabidly anti-gay, along with anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic to boot.

Swaggert was the cousin of two famous musicians: early rock-n-roller Jerry Lee Lewis, whom he publicly derided when Lewis married a 13-year-old girl; and country music star Mickey Gilley. He was born in Louisiana in 1935 and became a preacher first with revival meetings through the South, then radio shows, and eventually his television ministry starting in 1975. “At its peak in the mid-1980s, Jimmy Swaggart Worldwide Ministries had a television presence in more than 140 countries and, along with its Bible college, took in up to half a million dollars a day from donations and sales of Bible courses, gospel music and merchandise,” reported the New York Times.

In October of 1987, though, Swaggert was photographed outside a New Orleans motel with a female sex worker who would later say that she had several sexual encounters with the fire-and-brimstone preacher. This was after Swaggert had already publicly pilloried fellow televangelist Jim Bakker for his sexual scandal involving Jessica Hahn.

In a grand-standing public apology, crying on cue for the cameras, he said, “I have sinned against you, my Lord, and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain."

He didn't learn his lesson, though. As The Advocate reports, "He was less contrite after he was caught with a female sex worker and pornographic magazines in his car during a traffic stop in Indio, California, in 1991. 'The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business,' he told attendees at the Family Worship Center."

Swaggart, in my own personal estimation, was almost boring in his obvious religiosity and homophobia. While wildly successful, he never rose to the social and political peak of people like Bakker, Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson. He was a second-rate success, where even his homophobia was bland and uninspiring. Researching quotes, they were all so typical I couldn't even work myself up to any kind of anger. His opposition to gay marriage was summed up in 2004 when he said, “I’ve never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I’m going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I’m going to kill him and tell God he died.” Great, cool. Okay. And? A 70-year-old washed-up minister threatens gays. So? It's more telling that he then says he'll turn around and lie to his god. Now that's funny! But ultimately kinda sad.

The Advocate goes on to describe his other old-man prejudices: "He called Judaism, Catholicism, and Mormonism 'false cults,' and he said Christian Science was 'neither "Christian" nor "scientific."' He also said the suffering of Jewish people was due to 'their rejection of Christ.'"

Let's face it, he wasn't terribly original. Even in death, he had to have the added typical ignominy of having Trump's endorsement, who called him, after his death last Tuesday at the age of 90 of heart failure, “an incredible Man of Faith (who) inspired millions with his Great Love of God and Country.”

And of sex workers.