Arbiters of Kool

On November 18, 1978, 908 members of Peoples Temple, a Disciples of Christ congregation founded by Jim Jones, drank poisoned fruit drink and died. They carried out their "revolutionary suicide," as they called it, with impressive efficiency. Months before, Peoples Temple leaders had collected the potion's ingredients and tested them for maximum lethality with minimal discomfort. On the night of the event, Jones assembled his followers — then mostly located in a socialist utopia in Guyana known as "Jonestown" — to deliberate on whether the time for revolutionary suicide had come. Dissenting views were aired but ultimately rejected. The decision reached, the residents of Jonestown formed a queue. First infants had the poison squirted into their mouths. Then older children and adults drank. As they died, Jones urged his followers not to scream but to face death with dignity. The citizens of Jonestown lay down one by one, dying in each other's arms.

Surviving members of Peoples Temple confirm that the event had been rehearsed. On "White Nights" — Jones's term for a state of emergency within the community — Jones would assemble his congregation and tell them that they were in danger. Members would then testify on the need to commit revolutionary suicide. Finally, cups of flavored drink said to be poisoned would be passed out and drunk. On the last "White Night," the poison was real.

Jones's extreme loyalty test has entered the lexicon as "drinking the Kool-Aid." (By most accounts, the actual drink was Flavor-Aid.) To "drink the Kool-Aid" is to acquire an irrational loyalty to a particular figure or movement, often to the exasperation of one's friends and comrades. By now somewhat hackneyed, the phrase remains a vivid image of ideological blindness. It also — together with the media's tendency to describe Jones as a weird cult leader — makes it all too easy to dismiss Peoples Temple as a bunch of brainwashed freaks.

In reality, Peoples Temple was firmly a part of mainstream cultural, religious, and political life. It enjoyed the support of prominent figures from Harvey Milk and Angela Davies to Rosylynn Carter and Walter Mondale. The mainline protestant denomination Disciples of Christ ordained Jones as a minister back in 1964. San Francisco mayor George Moscone even appointed Jones Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission. If Peoples Temple was a cult, it was one that was not only accepted but prominently admired.

Moreover, the teachings of Peoples Temple are entirely familiar to us — indeed, in some cases, they are ubiquitous today. To this day, Jones's defenders praise his vision, even as they ultimately condemn the idea of revolutionary suicide. Some even say that Peoples Temple held out unique hope for mankind. Years after the event, some survivors expressed regret that they did not die with the others, and described their years in Peoples Temple as the happiest of their lives.
Jones's teachings included the following:

Racial harmony. Jones preached that all races could live together in harmony. He even adopted several black and Korean children into his own family. Long before "diverse" became a euphemism for "non-white," Jones made sure to recruit a sufficient number of representatives of every race. Peoples Temple, he boasted, was a "rainbow family." Ever summer, Jones took his followers (located in the 1970s in San Francisco) on bus tours around the country. The tours showed Peoples Temple as a joyful, racially integrated community. It seemed to many that Jones had finally realized the dream of racial equality. One follower wrote on the last White Night, "His hatred of racism, sexism, elitism, and mainly classism, is what prompted him to make a new world for the people."

Gay rights. Jones, who had sex with both men and women, thundered against society's prejudice against gays. In the early 1970s, he began actively recruiting lesbian and homosexual members. When interviewed, gay members spoke gratefully of how Jones and Peoples Temple welcomed them for who they were. In San Francisco, Peoples Temple contributed speakers and volunteers to a variety of gay rights causes. Harvey Milk, the celebrated San Francisco politician, even wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter in Jones's defense.

Much of Jones's teachings on sexual ethics seem outmoded today. Contrary to contemporary thinking, for example, Jones taught that everyone had homosexual inclinations. Here, Jones's views echoed those of sex research pioneer Albert Kinsey, who plotted homosexual-heterosexual orientation on a linear scale from zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual). If the Kinsey scale is correct, then, as Jones taught, a pure heterosexual is rare indeed. The gay rights movement today argues that homosexuality is a congenital condition affecting only a minority of the population who deserve our tolerance and protection. In Jones's today, however, it was often argued that homosexuality affected the entire population and should not be seen as abnormal. Peoples Temple was simply following a conventional script for sexual progressives of the time.