Tammy Faye (Tribute Tee)

Tammy Faye — Tribute Tee

Big hair, bigger eyelashes, and a heart that proved considerably larger than the television ministries surrounding her.

Tammy Faye Bakker became one of the most recognizable faces of American televangelism during the 1970s and ’80s. With husband Jim Bakker, she helped build the enormously successful PTL television network, where her emotional interviews, gospel songs, extravagant makeup, and tendency to cry directly into the camera made her impossible to mistake for anyone else.

But Tammy Faye’s legacy took an unexpected—and important—turn in 1985, at the height of the AIDS crisis. On The PTL Club, she interviewed Steve Pieters, a gay Christian minister living with AIDS. While many prominent evangelical figures were condemning gay people or treating AIDS as divine punishment, Tammy Faye spoke to Pieters with warmth and compassion, openly discussing his sexuality and illness and telling viewers that Christians needed to love people with AIDS rather than fear them.

It was a remarkably humane moment for evangelical television in 1985, and one that earned Tammy Faye a lasting affection within the LGBTQ+ community.

After the spectacular collapse of PTL and years of tabloid scandal, she reinvented herself as something nobody could have predicted: a beloved camp icon. She appeared at Pride events, befriended drag performers, spoke repeatedly in support of gay people, and seemed genuinely delighted by the community that had embraced her.

The makeup certainly helped. But underneath the lashes was something more important—a woman whose instinct, when much of her religious world was choosing judgment, was to choose kindness.