After he'd come out and moved to New York, he returned to Dallas and attended a gay pride parade. "We used to go down to the gay bars in Dallas and try to save the gays," he says. "HOMOSEXUALITY: Adam and STEVE" was a chapter title in Michael Youssef's 1986 book " Leading the Way: The Church or Culture?" Strangest of all, rocker Little Richard used it to renounce his own "gay lifestyle." Here's a 1986 appearance in Jet magazine:Īround this time, Craig Chester served as a teen missionary. "Adam and Steve" started appearing prominently in books both by and about the thriving Religious Right. A Massachusetts politician, Roger Goyette, used it to block gay rights legislation in 1985. Dannemeyer latched onto the slur, as noted by a 1986 Los Angeles Times profile. (Bizarrely, Martin Amis quoted Falwell's favorite refrain approvingly in a 1980 New York Times book review.)įrom there, it just spread.
I want memes not this gay fucking shit tv#
In the conservative Review of the News that year, he was quoted as saying, "God didn't create Adam and Steve, but Adam and Eve." By the early '80s, this was being touted as one of the pastor's favorite lines, appearing with slightly different wording in TV Guide and Esquire. Falwell used it in a 1979 press conference that was written up in Christianity Today. Whoever wrote the slogan was probably going for a snappier take on "If God had wanted homosexuals, he would have created Adam and Freddy," which was scrawled by a San Francisco graffiti artist in 1970 and parroted by anti-gay activist Anita Bryant (who swapped out "Freddy" for "Bruce") in People magazine in 1977.īut if you were to guess who first gave the phrase wider national exposure, you'd probably get it right on the first or second try: the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, of " Gays Caused 9/11" fame.
Is a Turkey," "Not Gay, But Happy People-Happy, Texas" and, of course, "God Made Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve." 19, 1977 report that quoted some of the protest signs: "E.R.A. The master of ceremonies was a businessman named Lee Goodman, who proclaimed it the "most significant day in the history of our country" and who died six months ago after being sued for ponzi-scheming more than 50 investors. This particular protest brought 15,000 "pro-family" spectators to an arena in Houston, where burgeoning Religious Right icons like Phyllis Schlafly and National Right to Life Committee founder Mildred Jefferson railed against homosexuality, abortion and the National Women's Conference happening five miles away.
The first known appearance of "Adam and Steve" came in 1977, in what would become its natural habitat: a picket sign at an anti-gay rally. This Google Trends chart shows how online appearances of "Adam and Steve" skyrocketed around the time of the Supreme Court decision in late June. Idealizing heterosexual partnership as the bedrock of, literally, the human race. (It's not.) But there's a lot packed into such a succinct homophobic mantra: God.
I want memes not this gay fucking shit movie#
He's now a filmmaker the first movie he wrote was the gay romantic comedy Adam & Steve.įor decades, the right-wing fight to keep gay couples from getting married-which culminated in defeat with last Friday's Supreme Court decision-has returned again and again to that single catchphrase: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Or: "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." If you were an alien wading into LGBT debates for the first time, you'd think it were a paragon of logic and stone-solid proof. I remember hearing stuff like that growing up and feeling a lot of shame."'Ĭhester tried to kill himself soon after, cutting his wrists in the high school bathroom. They would have seminars where people would come in and give lectures on what was going on in L.A. "There were starting to be gay characters on television. "I think my preacher or pastor was the first person I heard saying it," says Chester, who grew up in a born-again Christian family. It was the early 1980s-hardly a hopeful time for gay acceptance in the South-and Chester still remembers what his pastor told him when he found out about the doomed love: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Then he quoted a verse from Leviticus. At 16, Craig Chester fell in love with a boy in his suburban Dallas church.