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'Made me smile': Jimmy Carter’s quote about homosexuality and the Bible resurfaces

Carter was always ahead of his time.

via Commonwealth Club/Wikimedia Commons

Jimmy Carter at the COmmonwealth Club.

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States (1977 to 1981). Looking back on his achievements both in and out of office, it’s easy to say that he was a man ahead of his time. He was far ahead of the mainstream when it came to advocating for social justice, human rights, and the environment.

Carter famously installed solar panels on the White House in 1979, only to have them removed by Ronald Reagan.

The former peanut farmer and Navy Lieutenant from Plains, Georgia, was also far ahead of his time when supporting gay rights. In 1976, while running for president, he said he would sign the Equality Act, an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. “I will certainly sign it, because I don’t think it’s right to single out homosexuals for special abuse or special harassment,” he said.

He continued to advocate for gay rights as president. In 1977, the first gay delegation visited the White House. He also campaigned against California’s Proposition 6, which would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching in the state’s schools and was the first Democratic president to endorse gay rights in the party’s platform in 1980.

It may seem unusual for Cater, a confessed born-again Christian, to be a staunch advocate for gay rights. But he has publicly said that he believes that being pro-gay is wholly aligned with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Carter’s advocacy found itself in the spotlight once again after a meme featuring his thoughts about Christ and homosexuality from 2012 went viral on Reddit's MadeMeSmile forum on April 8, 2024.

Jimmy Carter
byu/PR0CR45T184T0R inMadeMeSmile

The viral quote was taken from an interview with the Huffington Post in 2012, during which Carter promoted his book, NIV, Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter. At the time, LGBTQ rights were the subject of heated debate in Washington, and President Obama had just “evolved” and began publicly supporting same-sex marriage.

"A lot of people point to the Bible for reasons why gay people should not be in the church or accepted in any way,” the interviewer Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush said. But Carter responded by correctly noting that Jesus Christ never said anything about homosexuality.

"Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things—he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies,” Carter said. "I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I'm a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs.

"So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does, by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn't require them to,” he continued.

Three years later, Carter shared the same sentiments in another interview with the Huffington Post, this time shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. “I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else and I don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else,” Carter said.

Jimmy Carter’s belief in gay rights stems from his faith as a Christian, but it’s also in complete alignment with his values as an American. Carter believed that the United States was a “beacon” for human rights, and in his 1981 presidential farewell address, he reminded the nation that the job was an ongoing struggle.

“The battle for human rights–at home and abroad–is far from over,” Carter said. “If we are to serve as a beacon for human rights, we must continue to perfect here at home the rights and values which we espouse around the world: A decent education for our children, adequate medical care for all Americans, an end to discrimination against minorities and women, a job for all those able to work, and freedom from injustice and religious intolerance.”


This article originally appeared last year.

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Identity

In 1983 actor Harvey Fierstein bravely shared what it means to be gay in prime-time TV interview

“I assume that everyone is gay unless I'm told otherwise," he told Barbara Walters.

via ClipoRama/YouTubeClipoRama/YouTube

Harvey Fierstein explains what it means to be gay to Barbara Walters.

If you want to know what it was like to be gay in the United States in the 1980s, an interview on ABC’s “20/20” where one of America’s prominent journalists, Barbara Walters, talked to 29-year-old Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein, is a great place to start. In 1983, Fierstein was the hottest thing on Broadway” with 2 hit shows: “La Cage aux Folles” and “Torch Song Trilogy.” But even though he was the talk of the town, Walters treats his homosexuality as if it is something foreign and threatening.

At the time, Fierstein was a rarity in pop culture—an openly gay male celebrity and his “Torch Song Trilogy” dared to do the unthinkable: humanize homosexual relationships. Fierstein later found mainstream success in films, starring alongside Robin Williams in “The Birdcage,” a movie version of “La Cage aux Folles,” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

In 1983, Fiersten sat down with Walters for a prime-time interview where he made the case that homosexuality wasn’t a deviant lifestyle and that it’s much more prevalent than most people think, especially in the arts.

“What's it like to be a homosexual,” Walters asked the actor, writer and one-time drag queen, point-blank. “I don't know. I'm just a person. I'm a person who sees the world in the opposite light than you do, that's all. But I see the exact same world as you do. I assume that everyone is gay unless I'm told otherwise. You assume everyone's straight unless you're told otherwise,” he told Walters and the millions of viewers watching at home.

Fierstein went on to dismiss the myth that homosexuality was caused by a strong mother and a weak father by noting that his brother was straight. He added that people must be born gay because LGBTQ people are found in every part of the world. “I mean you have to you have to start from the basics, 10% of the world is gay,” Fierstein said. “You got to stop with the ‘this is a sickness,’ ‘this is an abnormality.’ This is a normal thing that has gone on through the history of man. It has always been 10% of the population has never been bred out.”

In the interview, Fierstein also debunks the notion that homosexual people can’t enjoy the same type of committed romantic relationships as heterosexuals. “Those are not heterosexual experiences and those are not heterosexual words. Those are human words. Love, commitment, family belong to all people,” Fierstein said. "It is the norm in the homosexual community. It is not the norm in what you see on the news and all that. But what you see on the news and what you see in print are the bars.”



Fierstein added that when a happy lesbian couple stays together for 70 years, it doesn’t make the news. “Monogamy is as prevalent a disease in homosexuality as it is in heterosexuality. It's all the life choice that you make for yourself,” he joked.

The interview is a fascinating time capsule of a world right before the AIDS epidemic when LGBTQ people began coming out of the closet in increasing numbers to help fight the deadly pandemic. In the interview, Fierstein, as one of the few out and proud gay male role models, was forced to share simple truths about gay life that, 40-plus years later, most people have come to understand. It took a lot of courage for Firestein to speak his truth on such a big stage, and he did so fearlessly and with love and humor.

You can watch the entire interview here.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

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Over 800 LGBTQ troops kicked out under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ get upgraded to honorable discharges

The Pentagon is trying to right the wrongs of the discriminatory policy.

via Ted Eytan/Flickr

Protestors with a Pride flag outside of the White House.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday, October 15, that it has restored the honor of more than 800 LGBTQ veterans discharged from the military under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. "Under President Biden's leadership, the Department of Defense has taken extraordinary steps to redress the harms done by ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell’ and other policies on these former Service members," Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin announced in a statement.

The Pentagon's discharge status upgrades from dishonorable to honorable are a way to atone for the discriminatory policies it has enacted in the past. However, they also unlock access to veterans benefits for those affected by the policy.

For decades, many who bravely served their country couldn't access military benefits, including health care, college tuition, VA loan programs and some jobs. A defense official said that veterans affected by the upgrade will be sent information on how to get copies of their new, honorable discharge certification.

“We will continue to honor the service and the sacrifice of all our troops—including the brave Americans who raised their hands to serve but were turned away because of whom they love,” Austin said. The restoration of these veterans' honor comes a year after the Pentagon launched a review of military records of LGBTQ people discharged with a less-than-honorable status.



The “Don't Ask, Don’t Tell Policy” came as a compromise between the Bill Clinton Administration and the Pentagon that began as an attempt to end 8 decades of LGBTQ discrimination in the military. Up to that point, over 100,000 LGBTQ veterans had been kicked out of the armed services due to their sexuality.

The Clinton Administration promised to overturn the discriminatory policies until a Military Working Group determined that homosexuality was “inconsistent” with military service. These findings resulted in a compromise: Gay people could serve in the military as long as their sexuality remained a secret.

The "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy was in place between 1994 and 2011, and during that time, 13,500 military members were forced out of service. The majority were given honorary discharges; however, about 2,000 were separated with less-than-honorary distinctions.

“It’s really hard to truly wrap your head around the fear of living under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ The possibility that if someone found out about you, your entire life in the military could go away – that fear was a constant. That is sometimes lost when we talk about this policy, how it drains on you … you have to act for your personal sanity,” Gina Ortiz Jones, Under Secretary of the Air Force, reflected on the 10th anniversary of its repeal.

“The military is known for its bonds,” Jones continued. “But you can’t have those bonds when you can’t share your life or talk about your family with those you serve alongside. And when you’re in the military, your entire family serves – it’s hard to have seen how that would happen if the policy didn’t change.”

‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ was repealed on September 20, 2011, and service members discharged for their sexuality were allowed to re-enroll. Future recruits who joined the military were now free to do so without fear of facing discrimination for their sexuality.

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Pop Culture

Baby Boomers admit these 17 things are better than when they were young

Life has improved drastically in countless ways.

via Canva

A man in his 70s reading a book.

As people age, they long for the “good ol’ days,” when allegedly people worked harder, the world was safer, and everyone was kind and prosperous. However, the notion that somehow life in America was so much better in the past is more of a psychological trick than reality.

The idea that everything was better in the past, whether that means the ‘90s, ‘70s, or ‘50s, is the product of a cognitive bias known by psychologists as rosy retrospection. “It happens because when we think about the past, we are more likely to think about people, events, places, and things in the abstract,” Mark Travers, Ph.D., writes in Psychology Today. “And, when we think about things in the abstract, we are more likely to focus on positive generalities than the nitty-gritty and sometimes gory details.”

One of the biggest misunderstandings people have when comparing today to the past is the idea that crime is much worse now than it was in previous decades. However, crime statistics show that the violent crime rate in the U.S. is about the same in 2024 as it was in the 1960s, and the country is much safer today than it was in the ‘70s through the mid-1990s when crime was at its peak.

A Redditor asked the AskOldPeople subforum for people to share “something most people don’t realize has improved from when you were young,” people born in 1980 or after shared how the world has drastically improved since then. Many respondents were in their 60s and 70s and were part of the Baby Boomer generation. Many responses were about how people are much more tolerant than they used to be and products and services are far superior. Plus, you aren't bombarded by cigarette smoke wherever you go.


Here are 17 things Boomers and Gen Xers say have improved since their youth.

1. Cars are a lot safer

"Reliability of almost every car component. And then the reliability of the entire car improved astronomically. I’m 61."

"Agree. I saw a post where someone was complaining about engine repair on a car with "only 150k miles" on it. Back in the day cars barely made it to 100k. Dad would trade cars at 75k miles."

2. Long-distance calls were expensive

"Long-distance phone calls were so expensive, and now, with wifi, we can video chat around the world for free."

"I remember you didn't even need to call that far away to get hit with long-distance charges. People waited until evening time to call family members the next county over to avoid outrageous fees."

3. Fruit and vegetables

"The availability of fresh fruit and vegetables. I'm 74, and worked in the grocery business starting at age 13. In my youth, there were only a few months of the year when fresh fruits and vegetables were both available and affordable. I can remember working in the store and by October if we could get lettuce at all it came in half spoiled and I'd have to go through a crate of the stuff ripping or cutting off all the spoiled areas to get an end product that was only half or a third of the original head. I can remember marking down fresh green beans by a LOT, because the customer would have to go through pounds of the stuff to get enough for dinner for Then there was corn on the cob, having to strip off the shucks, cutting off the bad parts, then putting the remainder out on deep discount. Come Thanksgiving each year, we'd get a shipment from somewhere, probably California or similar, of actual fresh apples and oranges in prime condition. But they'd be so expensive that only people making more money than most could afford to buy the darn things. They'd go for as much as $1 apiece, which adjusted for inflation would be about $13 now."



4. Sex education

"Information about sex is much more available than it used to be. I'm not talking about porn and internet chatter, but solid information from reputable sources."

"When I was in school in the '50s, the idea that schools would offer sex education was unacceptable to almost every parent, left or right. It wasn't mentioned. Teen pregnancy rates were much higher than they are now."

5. Cancer treatment

"When I was little, nobody said the 'c' word, because it was a death sentence. When I was a young mother, getting it a second time meant you lost the battle. Now I’m in my 60s and a quarter of my friends are survivors. I know people who had stage 4 (metastasized cancer) 10 years ago and no trace now. I know people living with stage 4 cancer in them for years."

6. Closed captioning

"I'm deaf and hard-of-hearing. We didn't get closed captions on our TV t'il the mid-90s. Before that, you needed to buy a separate thing to attach to your TV. And now, every TV has them. Every streaming service. The only time closed captions aren't on in our living room is when my husband is watching sports. Because I don't watch them and the live captions are disruptive to him."

7. Women's treatment in the workplace

"I don’t know if women realize how much better things have gotten in the workplace. I was in the military 1993-99, and what would be causing harassment lawsuits today was just part of the job. Also, just part of the job was the idea that as a woman in a male-dominated field, not only did you have to be better than most at your job, you also didn’t complain."



8. Smoking

"I worked in a grocery store back in the day. One of the closing jobs was emptying the ashtrays at the end of each aisle."

"By everywhere, I mean everywhere. Your house, your friend’s house, the doctor’s office, school, everywhere."

9. Banking

"Having access to your money before there was online banking, ATMs, and apps such as Paypal and Venmo. Before the 80s, you had to get to the bank by a certain time to make a withdrawal or you were screwed. I got paid on Fridays and had to rush to the bank and wait in line to cash my check. I think they were open a little late on Fridays and Wednesdays. Saturdays they closed at noon and Sundays they were just closed. It was a real pain in the ass. One time the company I worked for was late giving us our checks and I didn’t make it to the bank on time, so I didn’t have much food in the house that weekend. BTW, they were paper checks. There was no direct deposit!"

10. Microwaves

"You have no idea what a breakthrough microwave ovens were. Frozen meals (what we used to call TV Dinners) could take up to 40 minutes to thaw, heat up in the oven, then cool down enough to eat. To prepare the most convenient form of popcorn there was, 'Jiffy Pop,' you had to stand at a stove and continuously shake it over one of the burners for about ten minutes. Heating up leftovers was a production; leftover pizza was generally eaten cold."

11. Crime is better

"Crime rates are waaaaay down."

"God yes. The 70s, 80s, and 90s were awful."



12. LGBTQ acceptance

"Definitely people’s feelings towards being gay. I remember how taboo it was in the 90s. Now I easily tell people I’m a lesbian and it barely moves any kind of needle. Other than some small weird enclaves, it’s been largely normalized."

13. Pollution

"Air pollution in cities. It’s still bad but you can’t imagine how bad it was in the '60s and '70s."



14. Racism

"As hard as we fight to reduce it today, racism is far less of problem than it ever was 50 years ago or even 30. The racists are louder than they used to be but that's because they're being squeezed harder. They march in the streets and say, you will not replace us, but we are doing it slowly and steadily."

15. Deliveries

"In the 70s and 80s you had to tear out the order form in the back of the catalogue, fill it out with your order, include a check (credit cards were rarer, and women weren't allowed to have one in their name for a long time), stick it in an envelope, get a stamp, drop it off in a mailbox, wait for them to get it, fill it and send it to you.... and you had no clue if they received the order, when it would arrive. It could take up to a month to get your order, so people also didn't buy things on a whim."

16. Mental health

"Mental health and talking about our mental struggles, depression, anxiety, etc. That wasn't a thing when I was younger.

I am 60 now. I really think it all began with Oprah. She sort of opened the door by having guests on her show address these issues."

17. Everything

"Almost everything. Seriously the perception that things are terrible now and everything was better 'before' is just crap."

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