Farewell Falwell

Jerry Falwell, one of the primary architects of the modern Religious Right, died today. While stating up front that I have problems with nearly everything Falwell stood for, you have to admire his success in his chosen field:

The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started a fundamentalist church in an abandoned bottling plant in Lynchburg in 1956 with just 35 members. He built it into a religious empire that included the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the ''Old Time Gospel Hour'' carried on TV stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University, which Falwell founded in 1971 as Lynchburg Baptist College.

In addition, he earned himself a place in American legal history:

In 1984, Falwell sued Hustler for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an liquor-ad parody that quoted him as saying he lost his virginity to his mother in an outhouse.

A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. The verdict was overturned in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.

In other words, Falwell had such a poorly developed sense of humor that he had to make the Supreme Court tell him, "jeez, lighten up - it's just a joke."

And, of course, he was a major league asshole. Some of his greatest hits:

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.

Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America.

If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being.

Last, but not least, my personal favorite. Speaking of 9/11:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'

Nothing like being told by one of the leading lights of the modern conservative movement that I'm a failure as a human being and that I was responsible for the death of 3000 of my fellow citizens. What a schmuck!

As long as I'm slinging around quotes, here is one from Clarence Darrow that captures my feelings on Falwell's passing very succinctly:

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

Indeed.