I was so happy about the fact that Glee was representing a Christian and then 10 minutes later I was disappointed. Not so much by Joe. Though his views on sex (specifically “bringing you closer to God”) were rather ignorant.
But it was Sam that spat in the face of the message. It’s 5:30AM so I won’t break down Sam’s argument point by point but it was just completely terrifying to think that I am relying on this representation of Christianity and then they go and do this. I have actually been let down because I know people will buy into this. People LOVE finding excuses to behave like everyone else and this is like petrol near and open flame.
Firstly, Sam quotes Biblical passages out of context - Leviticus is in the old testament; were rules specific to Jews; many scholars are convinced the majority of those rules were because they were unsanitary at the time (i.e. infection from tattoos, harmful bacteria in pork and shellfish). But besides any Biblical implications it was just incredibly sad to hear him say “there’s no way a dude’s gonna be able to resist.” Are men supposed to think so little of themselves? That they just do not have the strength to resist? I am personally offended at that notion. What’s more, the idea that no guy can resist is pretty much the root idea at the heart of rape culture. That sort of thinking is WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD.
He mentioned things like they didn’t have the internet - which makes me think he’s saying porn is okay - and they didn’t have short skirts. But you know what else they didn’t have? Women’s rights. Women were actually considered property to a lot of people back then. You don’t think their total lack of power would make resisting temptation hard? The fact that men could get away with things like adultery but women were killed? Objectification was much worse back then because it wasn’t even called out. So…what was your point again?
And then the line “you have to decide if you want to get closer to God or closer to her”… Well, that is just fundamentally wrong in every way. And, like, thanks so much for basically presenting impressionable youths with an ultimatum of abandoning their faith or having sex getting closer to someone. In fact, from my perspective getting closer to God and her are in the same direction - a.k.a. respecting her and yourself enough to wait and building a strong relationship that doesn’t rely on sex as glue (try not to take that as a generalisation). I mean, he could have meant physically closer but emotionally closer is still implied.
I mean, I respect this plot isn’t over yet (sidenote: yay for multi-episode story archs!) and Joe himself hasn’t adandoned his faith, thus destroying one of the best characters TV could have - except for Sam on Smash who beats Joe because he is a gay Christian which is pretty much the rarest species there is whilst being essential for bridging the religion-gay conflict. But his actions and discussion with Quinn support this screwed up view.
FIX YOUR SHIT, GLEE!
