In a revelation straight from cliché heaven, a report emerged on Monday that Jerry Falwell and his wife Becki Falwell had engaged in a long-term sexual relationship with a pool boy. Giancarlo Granda said that he met the Falwells as a 20-year-old pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in 2012. The encounter blossomed into a six-year relationship in which Mr. Falwell watched Mr. Granda have sexual intercourse with his wife multiple times a year. In a statement on the issue Mr. Falwell opted not to become the figurehead of a new Christian poly movement but, instead, followed the conservative Christian sexual ethics playbook and blamed his wife.
In the Aug. 23 statement that quotes from the King James version of the Bible, Falwell, Jr., a leading evangelical supporter of President Trump, said that “Becki had an inappropriate personal relationship with [Granda that he] was not involved [in].” Falwell includes a quote about adultery from the Sermon on the Mount, one about forgiveness from Ephesians, and one about trust in God from the book of Proverbs. He also reveals that the stress and “trauma” of being pressured by Granda led Falwell to experience depression and extreme weight loss (in the past he proudly attributed his weight loss to a lifestyle change). To Falwell’s credit, he at least reflects on what he himself might have done to contribute to this breach of marital trust, but this self-reflection might uncharitably be described as performative.
There are obviously two versions to this story. In one Falwell was a willing participant in an atypical yet consensual sexual relationship between adults, but one that would significantly undermine his position as an influential figure in American political and religious affairs. In another, which is more palatable to his Christian base, he is a betrayed husband struggling to come to terms with his wife’s affair. Several days later Becki Falwell issued her own statement in which she confirmed her husband’s story. There are still some unexplained details, however. For example, if Falwell was deceived, why was he allegedly on a call with Granda and Becki telling Granda not to make Becki jealous?
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If Granda’s version of events is accurate, Becki Falwell is hardly the first woman to shoulder the blame for sexual indiscretions. The idea that women are responsible for sin is as old as Adam and Eve. Though both members of the primordial couple choose to eat the piece of fruit (it’s not an apple in Hebrew) in the Garden of Eden, Adam blames Eve: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit from the tree, and I ate.” It’s Eve’s fault. It’s might arguably be God’s fault for creating Eve. It’s everyone’s fault but his own. At least, in the case of Eve she asked the serpent some questions, pushed back, and was lied to by the serpent. Adam, Dr. Liane Feldman of NYU told me, “didn’t even blink an eye. He just ate the fruit and ignored that he wasn’t supposed to.”
Following Adam’s defense, tradition has held women responsible for the downfall of humanity ever since. The author of the second century B.C. Jewish text Ben Sira says that “sin began with a woman and thanks to her we must all die” (25:24). The New Testament seems to agree: 1 Timothy 2:14 is resolute that “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was” and recommends that women spend their time bearing children to make up for it.
All of this blame conceals the fact that women in the Bible (as in the ancient world more broadly) rarely have sexual agency, choice, or autonomy over their own bodies. Even Eve doesn’t have a say in her partner; she is created for Adam and is just expected to like it. Enslaved women like Hagar are forced to become sexual surrogates and then cast out to die when they are no longer useful. Other rape victims are forced to marry their attackers (Deuteronomy 22:28). A woman whose husband dies is obligated to marry his brother and have children with him on behalf of her first husband. Women are regularly shamed for being sexual sinners and sex workers, but the men who visit them don’t face the same condemnation. It’s not until the first century A.D. that Paul tells the men of Corinth that they really have to stop having sex with prostitutes. Some women, like Mary Magdalene, have mistakenly been sexualized and labelled prostitutes for no reason at all. Women are even responsible for the mistakes of men; the foreign wives and concubines (1000 in all) of Solomon are held responsible for turning him away from God (1 Kings 11:4)
To make matters worse, many of the biblical women who have reputations as “temptresses” actually were nothing of the sort. According to the 1951 movie David and Bathsheba, it was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, who seduced King David. The biblical story says nothing of the sort. David saw her bathing (which does not mean she was naked) and had her brought to him by others. How much choice can we imagine she had at that point, when confronted by the most powerful person in her world? Salome, who danced for King Herod and asked for the head of John the Baptist on a platter, is presented by Oscar Wilde as doing a seductive striptease, but for all we know she might actually have been a child. As Dr. Katie Edwards, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, has written, the sexualization of women in popular culture is often very different than their depiction in the Bible.
This understanding of all women as temptresses affected the way that Christian writers described women’s experiences of sexual violence. In a recent article on Augustine of Hippo, Dr. Jennifer Barry, a professor of religion at the University of Mary Washington, shows just how skeptical Augustine’s position in the City of God actually was. Even if all evidence supports a woman’s claim to be a victim of sexual violence, he argued, no woman is actually free from fault. Barry told me that, for Augustine, “sexual immorality, whether actually committed or merely fantasized, should be understood as the default in every woman.” It’s a whole new definition of “asking for it.”
Even though it’s much more common for men to have multiple sexual partners than women, wife-sharing does happen in the Bible. Consider the story of Abraham and Sarah’s journeys in Genesis 12. Abraham and wife Sarah travel to Egypt where Abraham tells Sarah that he is going to introduce her as his sister because he’s worried that otherwise they might kill him in order to get to her. Sarah goes along with this and, lo and behold, Pharaoh takes Sarah into his household and gives her ‘brother’ sheep, donkeys, oxen, enslaved people, and camels. As a result, God afflicts Pharaoh and his household with plagues. Pharaoh comes to Abraham, asks him why he never mentioned that Sarah was his wife and sends newly enriched Abraham and Sarah on their merry way.
While there’s actually no sex involved, Abraham doesn’t know that God will intervene when he hands Sarah over to Pharaoh. The whole thing is a rather bizarre tale in which Abraham is prepared to pimp out his wife in order to save his own skin. What makes all of this stranger is that exactly the same thing happens again in Genesis 20 when Abraham and Sarah journey to the Negev and meet King Abimelech. And, once again, Abraham walks away with sheep, oxen, silver, and enslaved people. Profiting from passing your wife off as your sister once is a mistake; twice is a business plan.
If Falwell wanted a biblical precedent for sharing his wife with another man, he might have been able to pull it off. In a non-evangelical context he simply could have shrugged and said that it was none of anyone’s business. But, having spent the duration of his career narrowing public morality to what Dr. Sarah Rollens calls “vanilla middle-class ‘Family Values’,” that was never going to happen. Instead he went the tried and tested route of blaming the woman.
