Sexual Hypocrisy

Earlier this week, Fox News finally released an article about Giancarlo Granda, something that many other news outlets had done a few weeks prior. Granda, a 29-year-old man, is one of the folks caught up in the sex scandal of Jerry and Becky Falwell.

This was actually taken from Mt. Sugarloaf in Massachusetts. I assume that the foothills of the Appalachians in Southern Virginia look similar. (?)

According to Granda, who met the Falwell’s while employed as a pool boy at a Miami hotel, Becki Falwell invited him back to their hotel room for a voyeuristic adventure in Becki and Jerry’s sexual experience. Thus began a six-year-long cuckolding relationship (they had sex while Jerry watched in the corner) between Becki and Granda, followed by blackmail tactics against Granda to keep him silent. 

Vox succinctly described how the Falwell’s used political and financial exploitation to keep Granda’s relationship under wraps, and create enormous amount of wealth from Liberty University, transforming it from a for-profit online school to a centerpiece for conservative education. We’ll talk more about this in Sexvangelicals, but sex is never just about sex. Sex is about power. Sex is about class. Sex is about race.

But for this article, let’s just talk about sex. Cuckolding can be a really erotic experience for folks, particularly if all three (or more) parties agree to the terms of the experience. It’s unclear how consensual Granda’s role was, particularly if the Falwell’s were both spending lavishly on Granda to join them around the world and simultaneously adding to their “hush money” line item in their family budget. 

Okay, in this case, it’s impossible to separate sex from power. 

And this is before we get to Liberty University’s code of conduct. The online student version has these expectations. (Note: the student university code is only accessible to the Liberty community.):

• Casual dress consists of class dress and/or loose-fitting modest shorts, warm-ups, and footwear. Swimming pool attire should be a modest one-piece swimsuit. (To be fair to Liberty, the conduct dress code for men is the same for women, with the exception of the word “one-piece.)

• Media and entertainment that is inconsistent with Liberty’s standards and traditions (i.e. lewd Lyrics, anti-Christian message, sexual content, nudity, pornography, etc.) are not permitted on or off campus.

• Sexual relations outside of a biblically-ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University. In personal relationships, students are encouraged to know and abide by common-sense guidelines to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

There are quite a few questions that come to mind when reading this section of the code of conduct:

1) What does “anti-Christian” mean?

2) What the hell does “appearance of impropriety” mean? My eyes rolled right out of my  head when reading that phrase.

3) Later in the code of conduct, this sentence appears. “Vulgar comments (e.g., comments of a sexual nature) and derogatory comments concerning a person’s protected status (e.g., religion, sex, race, etc.) will not be tolerated.” How do you ensure that queer folks, who have been routinely scapegoated and gaslit in the Moral Majority, get protected at Liberty?

4) So…who’s going to enforce all of this?

5) More importantly (and perhaps more dangerously), how is this going to get enforced?

Don’t think Granda is the only sexual victim here.

Because at the core of this document is Jerry Falwell, Jr., the face of Liberty University, posting pictures of himself with random women on his Instagram feed, drink in hand (Liberty’s alcohol policy is another conversation), with a sign on his head that reads:

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

Falwell is by no means the only religious leader who has espoused a sexual ethic of “don’t”, only to live a completely different lifestyle.

• The thousands of Catholic priests worldwide who abused children. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse reported that 1,880 Catholic priests (7% of all priests in Australia, representing 46% of the Catholic Churches in Australia) sexually perpetrated young boys and girls. Dioceses in the United States have listed 5100 clergy members who sexually assaulted children, a third of whom, according to the Associated Press, were still working with children in some capacity. For more stats, check out the Wikipedia page on Catholic Church sexual abuse cases.

• The 200+ Southern Baptist pastors who were convicted of sex crimes, from rape of adults to molestation of children.

• The hundreds of Republican policy makers, many of whom also identify as Christian, who have promoted anti-LGBTQ legislation, only to have sexual relationships with men themselves. This website lists 19.

It seems that there are two common responses to the sexual, and thus, political hypocrisy of church leadership. 

1) Leave the church (which, I’ve gotta be honest, is pretty enticing some days.) 

2) Double down on your commitment to the church and religious and/or conservative values.

Last year, David Campbell and Geoffrey Layman, professors at Notre Dame, released a longitudinal survey about the intersection of politics, moral behavior, and sexuality. In 2011, a decade after Bill Clinton was roasted by Evangelicals and the Republican Party for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, 60% of White Evangelicals agreed with the following:“A person in public office who “commits an immoral act in their personal life [cannot] behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.”

In 2016, following the release of Trump and Billy Bush giggling about raping and gaslighting women, the number of White Evangelicals who adhered to that statement dropped to 20%.

So the fact that Fox News reported Granda’s story, without making excuses for the Falwell’s (even if the article was published three weeks after everyone else published it) is big news.

My experience is, the more that I do workshops and lectures for churches and religious folks, regardless of where they lay on the political spectrum, the more that I find people who are hungry for dialogue about sexual health. 

Which is where Sexvangelicals comes in.

Julia and I want to write and talk about sexuality from a number of different perspectives that we take as sex therapists. In the next few weeks, expect blog posts and podcast articles from us about: 

• Consent, and how to have conversations about sexuality

• The ineffectiveness and double binds that arise from purity culture.

• The impact of sexual shame on relationships

• How the church reinforces both misogyny and misandry.

• Divorce, infidelity, queer relationships, and a whole range of other relationships that the church has defined taboo.

If you find yourself discouraged by the way that the church has handled sexuality, but also find yourself with limited resources about sexual health, we want to hear from you.

If you’ve found ways to incorporate sexual health into your life following limiting, belittling descriptions about sexuality from the church, we want to hear from you too. 

Please take a few minutes to follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and join our mailing list as well for more info about new blogs, podcast, and other content. We’re excited to have you along for the journey!

#letshealtogether