A new book reveals how evangelical culture equates gayness
and fatness as both sinful inabilities to control urges. January 31, 2012
Fatness and gayness have a few
things in common: They are both highly charged social issues that can
anger people in ways few other things can. To many people, they both
represent a sinful inability to control urges – in the case of fat
folks, to eat food, and in the case of gay people, to have sex. In
evangelical circles, however, fatness and gayness are not just
stigmatized, they are actively fought.
In her eloquent new book, “Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual Reorientation in Evangelical America,” Lynne
Gerber examines the ways these two separate issues interact in that
most morally stringent segment of American culture. A University of
California, Berkeley, scholar in residence whose work emphasizes
intersections of sexuality, bodies and health in contemporary
Christianity, Gerber spent more than three years documenting evangelical
weight loss and ex-gay culture, primarily in two evangelical
ministries, First Place, a weight loss group, and Exodus, an ex-gay
ministry with aims to train gays into straightness. Along the way,
Gerber unpacks the historical influence of evangelicalism on American
society, while providing a thoughtful look at real people struggling to
change.
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