Politics & Power Quote by Jimmy Swaggart

Swaggart’s sentence is a live-wire performance of disgust, built to turn revulsion into righteousness. The most revealing moment isn’t the slur of “asinine, idiotic stupidity,” but the little hiccup of uncertainty: “I’m trying to find a correct name for it.” He pretends to be searching for the proper theological term while already delivering a verdict. That faux-scruple functions like a moral alibi, implying he’s restrained even as he escalates. The pause is stagecraft: it heightens anticipation, then releases it as condemnation.

The repeated phrase “dancing around this” casts politicians as evasive, unserious, cowardly. It’s a familiar populist move: shift the problem from policy to character, from debate to betrayal. The enemy isn’t simply same-sex marriage; it’s the idea that public leaders won’t say the “obvious” thing out loud. Swaggart frames himself as the one person brave enough to name what others allegedly conceal, converting bluntness into authority.

Context matters: a Pentecostal televangelist shaped by America’s culture-war circuitry, where outrage is both message and fuel. The line isn’t aimed at persuading skeptics with logic; it’s meant to consolidate a flock, to signal boundary and belonging. By calling same-sex marriage “stupidity,” he reduces a social reality to a moral malfunction, a flaw in “men,” not a question of rights. The intent is disciplinary: to make disgust feel like clarity, and to make dissenters sound like dancers.