By Bishop Durrell Watkins, DMin
The following celebrities share something in common:
Al Green, Alan Ladd, Bear Bryant, 70s heartthrob Ben Murphy, President Bill Clinton, Billy Bob Thornton, charming outlaw Cherokee Bill, Daniel Davis (The Nanny’s Niles), Dr. Benjamin Spock, Glen Campbell, Jerry Van Dyke, Jesse James, Johnny Cash, Machine Gun Kelly, Oscar winner Mary Steenbergen, Maya Angelou, Rudy Ray Moore (Dolemite), Sam Walton, Sheryl Underwood (The Talk), William Fulbright, comedic actor Wonderful Smith, and Hattie Caraway (the first woman elected to a full term in the Senate, the first woman to chair a senate committee, and the first woman to preside over the Senate in the absence of the vice president and president pro tempore).
The individuals listed are all tied together by their connection to Arkansas—having been born there, raised there, or spent a significant portion of their lives living there. Ragtime giant Scott Joplin was born in Texarkana, TX which shares a border with Texarkana, AR.
Why this nostalgia about my home state? It’s because when I was thinking about Halloween another Arkansas celebrity came to mind, “The Fouke Monster.”
I was born 17 miles from Fouke, Arkansas and grew up hearing about this fiend from the bottoms of Boggy Creek. The anthropoid was reportedly 8 feet tall, hirsute, and 800 pounds with glowing red eyes and a terrible stench.
The legend goes back at least to the turn of the 20th century but one reported encounter with the simian-like celebrity in 1971 became the premise of the 1972 cult classic, “The Legend of Boggy Creek.”
While remembering this cryptid from my childhood, I then easily turned my thoughts to the LGBTQ+ community.
In our community, Halloween costumes tend to be sexy or humorous. We make monsters marvelous, ghouls gorgeous, and phantoms fierce (in a good way). It’s so like us to take figures that have been historically demonized and see new possibilities for them, to find goodness where others failed to look, to celebrate difference rather than condemn it.
Perhaps that is because we remember the times that we were called monsters. We were told that simply appearing in drag was a danger to children or that marriage equality would lead to the demise of civilization. People in power threatened to erase the transgender members of our community, and they called LGBTQ+ activism “radical ideology.”
We’ve resisted internalizing homophobic and transphobic cruelty by learning to believe in and celebrate ourselves, and being determined to show the beauty, goodness, and necessity of our divine diversity, sacred sexuality, and consecrated queerness.
As far as Fouke’s most famous citizen, maybe Ms. F. Monster is unfairly judged merely for being different. Maybe she simply wants to live her life as the unique being she is. Admiration would be nice, but the end of condemnation would be a good start.
That’s true on many fronts, isn’t it? Happy Halloween and blessed be.
Bishop Durrell Watkins, DMin. is the Senior Minister of the Sunshine Cathedral. Sunday worship is at
9 AM and 10:30 AM.
