I'd just gotten whacked upside the head by the Puberty Fairy not too long before I first saw Tammy Faye on TV. My mother was smitten with her husband. My father made us watch the movie Logan's Run again. My brother and I were a little too young to make such esoteric connections and I found the movie really embarrassing. The Puberty Fairy had missed when she tossed the boy band dust at me.

I grew up with Tammy Faye in the peripheries. Shortly after she and Jim became something of an irregular staple in our familial television routines, Jimmy Swaggart showed up and did his thing. My dad, Super Atheist Man (bet he even had atheist underoos) watched the guy every week, thought he was great. Jim made it pretty big in both the Christian circles and big scandals people won't remember in a few years world. Tammy Faye, though, she was bigger, she was an icon. Her mascara was famous, more famous than her hubby's penchant for embezzling church funds and pretty church secretaries. Her make-up was immortalized on everything from t-shirts to bumper stickers. She was a household name, she was slang, she was an adjective. By the end of the 80s, she was Tammy Faye. Jim Bakker was "that guy who was married to Tammy Faye before he got caught banging his secretary."

I know of a lot of people by their religion. They're Christian or Muslim or whatever first, people second. It's mostly people that I see in the news or yelling at passers-by on street corners. Tammy Faye, though, she was different. I watched her cry rivers of mascara on television sometimes. You'd think that it would be made-up or fake, you know? That it would seem as if the only reason to have so much eye make-up was to enhance the appearance of tears when they bled down her cheeks. It's hard to judge the sincerity of people on television, but I really liked Tammy Faye, at least once I got past the horror of thinking that I was doomed to a life of too much make-up, too.

It was the 90s, though, that I remember her for the most. She had a little show with Jm J. Bullock for a while. J.J. was one of my favorite 80s sitcom supporting actors. He's one of those guys people kind of know the face of, but never really remembered. He's gay. Tammy Faye loved him just as much as she loved everyone else. You know how rare that kind of thing is? For the average Christian out there, homosexuals are in league with the devil. Some may deny that it's not an average Christian thing, but numbers don't lie. Tammy Faye, though, she didn't care what Fallwell's minions (that'd be the Moral Majority and assorted sychophants) thought about it. She knew what Christ was all about.

It's an interesting contrast. She covered her face with the very thing most use as a mask for their real selves, but it never seemed to be a cover. She looked like what many a 50's mother would consider a harlot, but she didn't just talk about Christ, she lived it. I could never help but respect that.