Evangelical hero worship tolerated profanity and violence when framed as heterosexual and patriotic

Evidence

Wayne’s crassness was part of his appeal, if not the key to it—and this would become a pattern among evangelical heroes, religious and secular. … He defended his use of profanity and his dramatization of violence onscreen (“All our fairy tales have some kind of violence—the good knight riding to kill the dragon, etc.”). There was a place, too, for sex in films, but only heterosexual sex. He had no use for Midnight Cowboy, “a story about two fags,” but “as far as a man and a woman is concerned,” he was “awfully happy there is a thing called sex”—it was “an extra something God gave us” and he didn’t see why it shouldn’t be portrayed in film, in a “beautifully risqué” way. “Healthy, lusty sex” was a wonderful thing. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 138

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Echoes the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ piece — Wayne’s defense of ‘healthy lusty sex’ as divinely given parallels how sexual display gets framed as natural/God-given rather than scandalous. His policing of which sex counts (heterosexual only) is the same boundary-work pattern.