How Gay Men Changed the Heart of the God Warrior

If you've been on the internet at all in the last fourteen years, you've probably seen memes of the God Warrior, an iconic reality TV meltdown on the hit 2000s series Trading Spouses where a small-town, Christian woman was forced to swap lives with a Wiccan family and absolutely loses it when she returns to the comfort of her home.

But did you know the woman behind the meme, Marguerite Perrin, is an LGBTQ+ ally?

In a new profile in Esquire, Perrin opens up about her daughter's death and how the gay men who helped turn her into a meme rallied around her in her time of need.

Ashely Perrin, who can be seen on the Trading Spouses episode, died in a car accident in 2007. "I have to tell you, I was in my bedroom. I was not getting out of bed for the longest time," said Perrin.

She explains that her closest friends couldn't even talk to her about her grief, but the gay fans she made from the show were the ones to reach out with condolences and notes and flowers. "[The gay community] weren't scared to talk about me losing Ashley and saying I'm sorry to hear about that. I was pretending like I was happy and I was okay. They would not leave me alone. You couldn't help but talk to them and be okay with them. The people that write those little memes and do those little things, I love that. That's what got me out of bed after Ashley's death."

During World Pride earlier this year, gay men who spotted her on the NYC streets approached her with similar sentiments twelve years after Perrin's loss.

"We wanted to tell you we were so happy to see you in New York and we want to tell you we're very sorry to hear about your daughter Ashley," Perrin asked them for a hug, Esquire reports, and perhaps that's how we got those newly viral photos of her waving rainbow flags.

Kindness from the people who turned her into a meme helped open up her heart and mind. She's not quite as judgemental as she was all those years ago on the show. Perrin says that she didn't even realize that people weren't Christian outside of her small town, but the support she received after Trading Spouses exposed her to other ways of thinking.

"Who am I to say who's going to go to hell and who's going to go to heaven," she says. "Really? I mean, seriously."

Perhaps the God Warrior's story isn't over just yet. She's currently working with producers on a new reality series that places her in uncomfortable cultural situations (minus the yelling, she says). "She wants to show the other side of Marguerite, not God Warrior. As she puts it, 'If I was having my last supper, it's going to be a variety of people sitting at my last table, okay?'"