Private: Joe Exotic’s “Gay-Cage” Sexuality
5 husbands, 176 tigers, and a 22-year sentence in federal prison.
This is Joe. But let’s allow him to introduce himself: “I’m Joe Exotic, otherwise known as the Tiger King, the gay, gun-carrying redneck with a mullet.” And that pretty much sums him up.
The Tiger King of Netflix is Joseph Allen Schreibvogel Maldonado-Passage or better known by his stage name “Joe Exotic.” This long legal name is the product of the many and often concurrent polyamorous marriages of Mr. Exotic and his male sexual partners. He is the “star” of the Tiger King series.
The Netflix docu-series is a mix between “Jerry Springer” reality television and a call to protect animal rights. It is the strange place we are at in American culture where the otherwise morally bankrupt offer absolute moral platitudes on the care and stewardship of creation. Part activist, part entertainer – Joe Exotic lives out an unintentional cautionary tale for a culture detached from traditional Christian values.
No Tigers in Cages
The series revolves around the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, a roadside zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma started by Joe Exotic to rescue and shelter endangered and exotic species of animals. Throughout the series we see our protagonist argue for the protection of endangered species like tigers and other big cats. While his rescue efforts certainly deteriorate over time, Joe claims to have begun this animal ministry as a way to protect exotic animals. Throughout the documentary Joe and our other characters recognize there is something inherently wrong with tigers in captivity.
Joe also recognizes that his lions and tigers shouldn’t be in Oklahoma and says they belong in Africa or India. His zoo’s noble mission was purportedly dedicated to his deceased brother’s memory. A brother who dreamed of living in Africa with these wild animals. Each of the show’s competing characters claims to believe that the animals aren’t really meant to be in their zoos and sanctuaries.
“I’d shoot you, before I shot my cat.” – Joe Exotic
But they also love the animals to some degree and can see that captivity is not the ideal. This an issue where nearly all the characters seem to agree – Tigers were meant to live in the wild. They live their best lives when they live the way they were created to be and something deleterious happens to their quality of life when the Tigers are caged.
We see Joe and his rivals review the quality of life for their animals: living space requirements, food quality, breeding, veterinary care, human interactions, and so on. Everyone chimes in on the moral responsibilities these animals require of us and therefore the great sin, we are told, it is to disorder or exploit them from their natural habitats and behaviors.
The moral claims are plentiful, examples include: The cages are wrong. The cages are too small. The food is poor quality. These endangered animals shouldn’t be bred for money. The babies are taken away from mothers too soon. They animals shouldn’t be used for selfies. etc.
Basic to all of these is the idea that there exists a natural ordering to the tiger. Since these zoos disorder the tiger’s natural identity, they believe this disordering actually hurts the animal and is therefore morally wrong; a crime even.
“I’m In A Cage. You Know Why Animals Die In Cages? Their Soul Dies.” – Joe Exotic
Yet all of this can certainly be said of man as a creature, too. We are ordered by God in creation. The disordering of our created order is sin. But instead of metal tiger cages, man allows sin to cage him. St. Peter describes this cage of captivity as bondage. “While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.” (2 St. Peter 2:19)
The Gay Cage
Joe also ran for President of the United States and for Governor of the State of Oklahoma. He ran as a Libertarian with his homosexual orientation as a campaign plank. Just as St. Peter says, “they promise liberty…” but throughout this docu-series we learn that Joe’s gay lovers aren’t all that free. Like the tigers they’ve also been exploited. Joe’s husbands are men decades younger than him who were groomed into marriage with gifts and drugs. By the testimony of Joe and nearly everyone that knew them – his husbands weren’t even “really gay.” One even leaves Joe for a woman before the series ends.
Is this not disordered? Theologically we can tell you that the created order of marriage can never be reflected without male and female relationships. We go back to Adam and Eve and forward to Christ and His Church. But here, we also hear the warning of St. Paul who says, “the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another…” (Romans 1:27, emphasis added)
Just as cages prevent tigers from being natural tigers, homosexuality destroys the natural state of man. The slavery or bondage to our sin is truly a cage. It confines us to exploitation and prevents man from growing into who God created him to be. The cage of sin steals from man the joy, hope, and glory the Lord predestinated for his image bearers.
“Are the animals happy? Who knows.” – Joe Exotic
Joe eventually goes bankrupt, he loses his zoo, and is sentenced to 22-years in a Federal prison. Much of his time for crimes related to how he euthanized and buried some of his own tigers. In the last episode of the series, we hear Joe’s voice as he thinks back on the quality of each animal’s life inside the zoo. Joe recalls seeing his two chimps hugging one another after being caged separately for over a decade. “Did I deprive them of that for ten years? Yes,” he says. “Did I do it on purpose? No. I was wrapped up in having a zoo.”
Is Joe happy? I really doubt it. Did he set out to lead a disordered life on purpose. I really doubt it. But our own captivity to sin and our own self-imposed cages to fleshly desires pull us away from our created purpose. We stray from happiness because we stray from God’s way. We rebel against the God who made us and we rebel against the way God made us.
In the Bible we read, “but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” (Proverbs 29:18) The very beginning of this verse is the famous passage about perishing without a vision. In God’s wisdom, he puts an order in our heart and casts before our eyes the idea of the “good life.” He tell us that true happiness is found when we replace our own vision for his. Happy is the man that keeps the law – that keeps God’s ways and God’s truth.
Are you happy? I’m not talking about a sentimental veneer of momentary glee, but true happiness. Do you feel your life has a purpose and that God is truly calling you to become who you really are? Or have you allowed some burden or sin of this world to cage you in and to hold you down from what God has for you? Are you a tiger in a cage or wild and free to chase after real happiness?
The sad reality is that most people have become like most tigers. Sad. Exploited. Captive. Living in cages, but really slowly dying in cages.
Christians who embrace their true freedom in Christ are what might be described as an “endangered species.” As Christians compromise on marriage and sexuality, the natural habitat of Christian flourishing is disappearing as well.
The future forward is to reverse the sexual confusion and cultural fragmentation that has destroyed so many lives. Real “conservation” efforts for human good are protecting the creational ecosystems of marriage, family, and the common good.
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