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8:04 am EDT 63°F (17°C) in Richmond, KY
Calendar of Updates | Some very joyous news came to my attention yesterday: namely, the death of one of the most important figures of Christofascist terrorism, Jerry Falwell, from what is believed to be heart failure, at the age of 73. (It’s no surprise to me that his heart failed, what with all the festering evil it contained.) Satan’s most beloved son has returned to his proper place, burning for all eternity in the hottest, most painful levels of Hell, next to his hero and inspiration Adolf Hitler. For those who are either too young to know, or have been staying focused on the true Christ and avoiding Falwell’s Satan-inspired ramblings, here’s just a partial retrospective of the slander, lies, and evil hatred Falwell exhorted his followers to emulate: (see endnotes below) … these perverted homosexuals who absolutely hate everything that you and I and most decent, God-fearing citizens stand for … Make no mistake. These deviants seek no less than total control and influence in society, politics, our schools and in our exercise of free speech and religious freedom … [1] Make no mistakes my friend, this is a battle between good and evil. And the consequences for America are clear: the judgment of Almighty God on our nation … If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way. [1] The small, but outspoken and financially well-heeled, homosexual political lobby is a dangerous foe. They will stop at nothing, including violence, to secure their goals. [1] The abortionists have got to bear some burden for [9/11] because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. 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.’ [2] When I hear somebody talking about our military and ridiculing and saying terrible things about our President … I believe the Lord would forgive me if I popped him. [3] Thank God for these gay demonstrators. If I didn’t have them, I’d have to invent them. They give me all the publicity I need. [4] If the Reagan administration does not put its full weight against this [AIDS], what is now a gay plague in this country, I feel that a year from now, President Ronald Reagan personally will be blamed for allowing this awful disease to break out among the innocent American public. [5] [Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers. [6] AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah’s charioteers. … AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals. [6], [7] This ‘turn the other cheek’ business is all well and good but it’s not what Jesus fought and died for. [6]
[1] Soulforce: The Latest Open Letters Between Mel White and Jerry Falwell. As I said, this is just a very partial listing of some of the anti-Christian, Satan-loving words of Jerry Falwell. The last quote in that list, which is indicative of a total defiance of the Word of God in Matthew 5:39, should erase any and all doubts that Falwell was the most evil man of his time and perhaps second only to Hitler in all of history. We know that God’s decision about where to send Jerry Falwell yesterday was an absolute no-brainer — Falwell is now one day into the eternity he is going to spend in the lake of fire, wailing and gnashing his teeth. There are those who would call me cruel for pointing out this truth or for failing to give condolences to his family, offering meaningless sayings like “don’t speak ill of the dead.” Again, I have to ask: would we have gone out of our way to send condolences to the Hitlers, or say that we ought not speak ill of the Führer, after he shot himself in his Berlin bunker in 1945? Abso-fucking-lutely not. In fact, civilized, thinking people must by necessity speak ill of Adolf Hitler, so that the human race may always remember what he did and vow to never let it happen again. Given the lies and slanders Jerry Falwell perpetrated, the hatred he fomented, the suicides of GLBT people his words encouraged, and the separation of people from Christ that he directly caused, anybody with even one functioning brain cell must likewise remember Falwell in this way: we must always remember this pure evil and do everything in our power to never allow it again. There is also an important distinction to be made about “speaking ill of the dead,” for those who would accuse me of being unforgiving and holding everybody’s sins against them in death. Although I’ll probably hear from family members about how this is airing dirty laundry, I feel the most apt example I can make is that of my maternal grandfather, who died two years ago. Sadly, he did have some issues with alcohol over the course of his life, and while the resulting effects of that can probably be found in various ways in at least the next two generations of his descendants, it is not something for which he should really be remembered. The reason for this is that his alcohol problems — and I would probably say this of alcoholism in general — were a human failing, a weakness, rather than a deliberate action designed to foment discord and foist problems upon everybody else. My grandfather was not an evil man, but simply an imperfect one like all of us are in some way. We all have some weakness or character flaw that reminds us that, unlike God, we humans are not perfect. In his case, a weakness for alcohol was the manner in which his non-perfection — stated another way, the fact that he was merely human and not God, Who alone is perfect — was manifested. Regardless of its effects, though, that didn’t make him a bad person, and he would be far better remembered for, among other things, his razor-sharp wit and his prolific journalistic career that spanned nearly five decades. On the other hand, the actions of Jerry Falwell were deliberate. He had to know somewhere, even if that somewhere was inaccessible to his conscience, that what he was doing was wrong, evil, and firmly against Jesus Christ. Such an evil life ought to have ill spoken of it upon its end, so that we as a human race may remember the evil he perpetrated and scream “NEVER AGAIN!” As the old saying goes, those who don’t remember history and learn from it are doomed to repeat it. There is another important reason to speak ill of Jerry Falwell: so that his followers, family, and other so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’” might learn from his mortal sins, repent of their Satan-inspired judgment and hatred of God’s beloved gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children, and follow Jesus’ command to love one another unconditionally. Reminders to them of Falwell’s screams of agony in Hell will hopefully serve to make them repent of their evil anti-gay views and behaviors, and begin (a) treating their GLBT brothers and sisters with the unconditional, non-judgmental love and acceptance Jesus demanded, and (b) advocating for full GLBT equality in America. I won’t hold my breath on this, but we can certainly hope. I do also wonder what Falwell’s entrance into Hell means for the future of both GLBT equality in America and the so-called “religious right” (which, in truth, is neither). I think valid arguments can be made in both directions here: the “religious” Reich is like al-Qaeda in the “whack-a-mole” sense, in that when one dies there are two more to take the place; but unlike al-Qaeda, there is a fair bit of centralization in so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christianity’,” with a small group of elites (which most certainly included Falwell) issuing marching orders to the unthinking, unquestioning, blindly loyal hordes. While there are still thousands of elite “Christian” leaders such as D. James Kennedy, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, Rod Parsley, Fred Phelps, and Peter LaBarbera, and tens of millions of easily deluded followers, I do wonder if this could be the opening act in the beginning of the end of the “religious” Reich. If and when said Reich does begin to further wane in power and influence, this can only be good for the full GLBT equality that God demands of America. As the Larry’s Phat Page Orchestra hits the “Hallelujah” chorus from movement number 44 of Handel’s Messiah, in celebration of this great and blessed occurrence, I suppose I ought to stand for it. With that, I’m off for now. |
