Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee and Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Warner Bros. Pictures

A GameSpot writer, who uses the name Jessie Earl, and is a male pretending to be a female, seethed and lashed out at popular YouTuber The Critical Drinker all the while attempting to push the gay agenda onto J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee and Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures

The official The Lord of the Rings on Prime account initially posted four images of Isildur and an original character named Estrid played by Nia Towle. The account wrote, “Okay, we ship them.”

The Critical Drinker responded to this post writing, “What are you, like twelve years old?”

Earl took issue with The Critical Drinker’s post and shared an image of Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee and Elijah Wood as Frodo in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Earl wrote, “Yes, because no one ever shipped anyone ever in Lord of the Rings before. Anyways, here’s just two boys being straight.”

Jessie Earl on X

Earl did not stop there. X user DavidJBradley1 wrote, “I’m forever torn between we need to see more healthy loving platonic friendships between men in media and “damn, those hobbits gay as f**k”

Earl responded to this writing, “These both can coexist. Frodo & Sam are a great representation of an emotional vulnerable platonic male friendship. They can also be gay lovers. There is no one way to read them because they’re fictional characters. You can read them either way. That’s why art is f***ing cool.”

jessiegender on X

He then lashed out at Critical Drinker, “Asshats like Critical Drinker are so butthurt about me or any queer person seeing Frodo/Sam as gay or shit like SpiderGwen as trans not because they want to see more male friendships or whatever. They just want one TRUE interpretation that reenforces hegemonic norms.”

jessiegender on X

J.R.R. Tolkien made it abundantly clear that Frodo and Sam are not gay. In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Tolkien wrote, ““And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the Spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End.”

Later in the chapter, Tolkien wrote, “Time went on, and 1421 came in. Frodo was ill again in March, but with a great effort he concealed it, for Sam had other things to think about. The first of Sam and Rosie’s children was born on the twenty-fifth of March, a date that Sam noted.”

Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee and Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures

In a section of Appendix B titled “Later Events Concerning The Members Of The Fellowship Of The Ring,” Tolkien noted that “Goldilocks, daughter of Samwise” was born in 1431.

He also made it abundantly clear again that Rose is Sam’s wife by writing, “Master Samwise and his wife and Elanor ride to Gondor and stay there for a year.”

Sarah McLeod as Rosie Cotton and Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures

The death of Rose in 1482 was also documented by Tolkien, “Death of Mistress Rose, wife of Master Samwise, on Mid-year’s Day. On September 22 Master Samwise rides out from Bag End. He comes to the Tower Hills, and is last seen by Elanor, to whom he gives the Red Book afterwards kept by the Fairbairns.”

He continued, “Among them the tradition is handed down from Elanor that Samwise passed the Towers, and went to the Grey Havens. and passed over Sea, last of the Ring-bearers.”

Sarah McLeod as Rosie Cotton and Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures

Appendix C also features The Longfather Tree of Master Samwise. It shows that Samwise and Rosie had 13 children together. They are: Elanor, Frodo, Rose, Merry, Pippin, Goldilocks, Hamfast, Daisy, Primrose, Bilbo, Ruby, Robin, and Tolman.

The Longfather Tree of Master Samwise in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Appendix C

If this was not enough to disprove this despicable lie, Tolkien wrote in Letter 131 about the relationship between Sam and Rosie.

He penned, “I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty.”

Sarah McLeod as Rosie Cotton and Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures

Furthermore, Tolkien shared in a letter to H. Cotton Minchin dated April 16, 1956, “My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”

Letter from J.R.R. TOlkien to H. Cotton Minchin

Tolkien scholar John Garth also explains, “The relationship between Frodo and Sam closely reflects the hierarchy of an officer and his servant [in the First World War]. Officers had a university education and a middle-class background. Working-class men stayed at the rank of private or at best sergeant.”

He detailed, “A social gulf divides the literate, leisured Frodo from his former gardener, now responsible for wake-up calls, cooking and packing. British masculine reticence and class-consciousness problematised the communications between batmen and officers, the odd couples of the battlefield. Tolkien maps the gradual breakdown of restraint [through prolonged peril] until Sam can take Frodo in his arms and call him ‘Mr Frodo, my dear.’”

“By then, the hierarchy is largely inverted. Frodo moves towards a childlike dependency: he presents the problems, Sam the solutions,” he asserts. “In the First World War this process was far from atypical. Officers were given commissions for class reasons, not because they were experienced soldiers or leaders; whereas the privates and batmen often had the age, experience, and wisdom their official superiors lacked.”

Dominic Monaghan as Merry, Elijah Wood as Frodo, Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee, and Billy Boyd as Pippin in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures

Garth goes on to cite C.S. Lewis’ own personal experience, “C.S. Lewis, for example, had played Frodo to his sergeant’s Sam. ‘I came to pity and reverence the ordinary man: particularly dear Sergeant Ayres,’ Lewis recalled. ‘I was a futile officer (they gave commissions too easily then), a puppet moved about by him, and he turned this ridiculous and painful relation into something beautiful, became to me almost like a father.’”

“With the help of Sam’s homely chatter, Frodo even laughs on the edge of Mordor. ‘Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth,’ Tolkien notes. This is the kind of laughter that war correspondent Philip Gibbs [in Now It Can Be Told] believed acted as ‘an escape from terror, a liberation of the soul by mental explosion, from the prison walls of despair and brooding’ on the Western Front,” he concludes.

Sarah McLeod as Rosie Cotton and Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Warner Bros. Pictures

Despite this clear evidence that completely rebukes Earl’s comments, he attempts to use Tolkien to justify his own degenerate lifestyle and reading of the books and films.

He wrote, “It’s honestly really sad. Tolkien argued for applicability in art over allegory because he believed in arts ability to reach beyond singular interpretations. To hit deeper on an emotional level that rings beyond singular contexts. This isn’t to say context or allegorical interpretations aren’t worthwhile. There’s def some great British class analysis of The Hobbit or WWI allegory in LOTR. But art can and should be read through many lenses. That’s the fun of artistic critique and analysis – something Critical Drinker only pretends to care about.”

jessiegender on X

He concluded the thread, “There are is def more evidence for more interpretations than others, but this is why you see essays on stuff like Shakespeare or Middle-Earth or Star Trek for decades. Because it’s interpreting to find new contexts or evidence or arguments for art. There is no one lens for art.”

jessiegender on X

In another thread, Earl, who is hellbent on injecting his gay agenda onto The Lord of the Rings, would express outrage over individuals like The Critical Drinker rejecting it.

He wrote, “I’m tired of perpetual anger in geek culture. The outrage merchants have constantly bent every conversation in fandoms to their points because they always engage on grievance and anger. It’s exhausting and takes up too much space. It’s a decaying spiral into meaninglessness.”

The whole convo on The Acolyte centered around nonsense lore minutia. I find the talking about the shows ideas on policing and how well the show succeeds/fails in articulating it more interesting. But we don’t have that convo cause we’re talking about some Jedis age or whatever,” he concluded.

jessiegender on X

In response to another user, Earl bemoaned The Critical Drinker and others popularity blaming it on the YouTube algorithm.

“Honestly, some of the still would have hated it. We just wouldn’t have heard them because social media or YouTube didn’t algorithmically amplify them,” he wrote.

jessiegender on X

The seething did not stop there. Earl attempted to use Tolkien to defend his evil position again, “Even Tolkien himself argued that LOTR wasn’t just about WW1. To argue that that is the only interpretation allowed is frankly a diminishment of not only Tolkiens intent but the power of his art.”

jessiegender on X

In another post, Earl rejected the idea that “reading them as gay lovers is a wrong way to read them” given Tolkien was a devout Catholic. He wrote, “Devout Catholic does not equal homophobic.

jessiegender on X

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is quite clear on homosexual acts. It states, “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

St. Clement of Alexandria also wrote, “The fate of the Sodomites was judgment to those who had done wrong, instruction to those who hear. The Sodomites, through much luxury, fell into uncleanness, practicing adultery shamelessly and burning with insane love for boys; the all-seeing Word, whose notice those who commit impieties cannot escape, cast his eye on them. The sleepless guard of humanity did not observe their licentiousness in silence; but to dissuade us from imitating them, and training us to his own temperance, falling on some sinners, lest unavenged lust break loose from the restraints of fear, ordered Sodom to be burned, pouring forth a little of the sagacious fire on licentiousness; lest lust, through want of punishment, should throw wide the gates to those who were rushing into voluptuousness.”

He added, “Accordingly, the just punishment of the Sodomites became an image of the salvation that is well calculated for me. For those who have not committed sins like those who were punished, will never never receive a like punishment.”

St. Augustine of Hippo also succinctly wrote, “[T]hose offenses that are contrary to nature are everywhere and at all times to be detested and punished; such were those of the Sodomites, which should all nations commit, they should all be held guilty of the same crime by the divine law, which has not so made men that they should in that way abuse one another.”

Sodom and Gomorrah afire by Jacob de Wet II, 1680. Photo Credit: Daderot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What do you make of Earl’s attempt to push the gay agenda on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings? What do you make of him lashing out at The Critical Drinker and others opposed to his agenda?