The Eulogy Christian Patriarchy Does Not Want You to Hear

When the Powerful Die and Those Harmed Celebrate Out Loud

“We don’t do that anymore.”

When somebody notable dies, somebody invariably—and let’s be honest about who that someone usually is. It’s almost always a non-melanated person. They come from both sides of the political aisle. They will get online, clutch their chest, and say we need to respect the family’s wishes.

Honor their privacy.
Honor their grief.

And when it happens, I stand up to remind you: we don’t do that anymore.

We are not playing by the rules that Christian patriarchy laid down for so long. The rules that mandated the silence of everyone who was harmed, so the rest of us would bow our heads and admire the carefully crafted bio of the very person who harmed them.

So let me say this clearly.
Both things aren’t just valid.
They are true.
A family can grieve.
And there is no way on this earth we are silencing the anger, or the celebration, of the people who knew the other side of this man’s vitriol and his floating morals.

This is the man who once called Donald Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” This is the man who said, and I quote, “You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” Who called him a kook. Who was so sure of himself that he wouldn’t even cast a vote for him.

And then Trump won.

Then Graham played a little golf with him, and suddenly there was “a method to the madness,” as Graham said after meeting with Trump. When a reporter asked him, “How do you go from ‘go to hell’ to ‘yes sir,’” Graham said he was trying to “be relevant.”

Be relevant.

What’s clear is that Graham did not have a change of heart. Graham cosplayed morals until those morals no longer served him to remain powerful, influential, and, according to his own words, “relevant.”

Morals that only point toward power are no morals. They are a strategy, and that reflects Lindsey Graham’s legacy better than anything.

We saw it one more time, clear as day, on January 6th. When the Capitol was under attack and it looked, for one night, like it was finally over, Lindsey Graham stood up and said, “Count me out. Enough is enough.” For a hot minute, you could believe him. He seemed sincere that he had finally had enough.

Yet within weeks, he was back at Mar-a-Lago, hat in hand.
Because the power came back, so did Graham, once again removing the facade of morals he hid behind when those morals threatened to distance him from power.

So no.
Don’t tell us he was a man of conviction; he had none.

It wasn’t marriage.
It wasn’t the unborn.
It wasn’t the border.

It was relevance.
It was proximity to power.
Everything else was negotiable, and the bill for that negotiation was always, always paid by somebody with less power than him.

For those saying, “Now is not the time.”

They never tell you when the time is, because they not only do not know. They do not care. They really can’t even explain why they take offense at those celebrating the expiration of a person who chose to use his power to obliterate the rights of others. And when I said earlier about “both sides of the political aisle,” I mean I have lost followers who labeled themselves progressives, moderates, and liberals because they are aghast at what they call “offensive behavior” when someone expresses joy at the passing of another human being.

What they don’t realize is that what they’re saying is that the powerful should be mourned in full, and the people they stepped on should stay quiet a little longer. If they would only pause and reflect on their own indoctrination, they would see how Christian patriarchy deeply influences this belief. It taught us that submission and silence are reverence for the system that must be upheld for the good of the whole.

What they refuse to see is that this is the system that exists to perpetuate the power of the white Christian man, and they are a useful tool in their protection of it.

It’s a perfect example of why I say the power of Christian patriarchy extends far beyond churched systems. It literally is the foundation of our institutions and the reason so many are willing to defend it, even when they can’t explain why other than “It’s the right thing to do.”

Let me hold your hand while I say this: “If the ‘right thing to do’ requires the silence of a marginalized group of people, then it isn’t the ‘right thing to do.’ It’s the thing that Christian patriarchy is demanding of them to keep the system in place that protects the rich, the powerful…the white Christian man.”

Just like Lindsey Graham.

Let me hold your hand a little longer and say, “It’s always the same people who suffer, who have been forced to swallow their pain to keep everybody else comfortable.”

And why I say, “We don’t do that anymore.”

No one is denying that somebody loved Lindsey Graham.

Their grief is real.
Somebody loved that man.
Somebody is hurting right now, and I am not here to spit on that.

But grief for the family and truth for the harmed can live in the same room.

Whether you accept it or not, that type of honesty is not cruelty.
Honesty is a form of love.
It’s also spiritual because in this moment, it’s activism.
And that makes it Holy.

Holiness does not require you to be the comforter to those grieving when the departed harmed you. We do not honor the Christian patriarchal structure that says their sorrow means you must be silent.

So let me be very clear about whom I’m speaking to.

Lindsey Graham was a man who never had to fight for his own human rights, and he chose to spend decades fighting to deny them to everyone else.

For the LGBTQIA+ community, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham chose to co-write the Defense of Marriage Act. He voted to try to write a ban on same-sex marriage into the Constitution itself. When the Supreme Court finally said you had the right to marry the person you love, he called himself a “proud defender of traditional marriage.” And in 2022, when there was a chance to protect that right in law, he voted no.

For immigrant families, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham stood in front of a camera after visiting a detention facility and said, “I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days.” He wrote a bill to hold migrant children longer.

For women, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham authored a national abortion ban, over and over, after telling everyone the issue should be left to the states. It was left to the states right up until a federal ban served him better.

For Black Americans, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham stood up and praised John Lewis when he passed. And then, as the chairman with the actual power to move the Voting Rights Act named after John Lewis, the man he publicly praised, Lindsey Graham refused to even hold a hearing.

For poor folks, the disabled, for anybody just trying to keep their insurance, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham put his own name on a bill that independent analysts said would strip coverage from tens of millions and gut Medicaid for seniors, for children, for pregnant women, by more than a trillion dollars.

So if you felt any guilt at all for feeling relieved at the news of Graham’s passing…

I want to assure you that guilt is not yours to carry. Release that toxic Christian patriarchal burden from your life. You are not wrong for feeling it. You, who have spent your whole life being told your anger is ugly, your relief is sinful, your honesty is disrespectful.

Hear me: your anger is not a sin. Your anger is a receipt. It’s the record of something that was done to you. You are allowed to feel it. You are allowed to say it out loud. And if what you feel today is closer to relief, the loosening in your chest of a weight that was never yours to carry, you are allowed to feel that too.

You do not owe a single soul an apology for it.

The people who were harmed do not have a duty to mourn the one who harmed them.
That is not a rule of spirituality.
That is a rule Christian patriarchy wrote to protect itself.

So here’s where I’ll leave us.

I’m not asking you to hate.

I’m asking you to tell the truth and to let the truth make room for you.
The way Lindsey Graham never made room for you when he was alive.

Let the family grieve.
That’s theirs.

And let the hurting speak.
That’s yours.

Both are true.

And in this space, right here, we are going to hold all of it.
The anger.
The relief.
The celebration.
The receipts of his actions.

The space for those that Lindsey Graham harmed and never once looked back to take accountability for that harm.

You are not bitter.
You are not broken.
Your pain and your joy are valid.

And your testimony is welcome here.

I’m relieved for your loss