Jerry Falwell Dies..And?

It seems nothing in life is categorically black or white; even that stark mirror of
our own mortality, death, has wiggle room enough to sometimes be a good
thing. Such were the feelings of many in the LGBT community upon hearing of
the demise of one of the chief orchestrators of the American anti-gay industry,
Jerry Falwell. Joining them in their less than gloomy observance of Falwell's
passing were many in the feminist community, the Jewish community, and
those thinking republicans who recognized that he played a major role in the
ultimate undoing of their party’s credibility.
Sailing into the national spotlight at the helm of his Moral Majority special
interest group, Falwell terrorized gays and lesbians throughout the eighties.
Utilizing a few cherry-picked biblical verses, he gave the masses a group of
people to which they could feel superior, simply by virtue of their inherent
sexuality. Joining with a post-pro-choice Ronald Reagan, they exploited the
decidedly docile evangelicals with promises of ending abortion and getting rid
of those heretical gays. It worked. This marriage of convenience helped put
and keep Reagan in the White House, and brought Falwell a political clout
heretofore unknown in modern American politics. A wave of feigned religiosity
overtook the country as everyone decided that they were The Waltons -
despite their six-figure salaries and mounting cocaine habits.
The wave of conservatism however, seemed to ebb throughout the nineties;
even homophobia was on the decline - however slightly. Probably the only
positive thing to come out of the AIDS crisis was that it forced the gay
community into visibility, the fight for their lives was to be fought, not in the
closet, but out on the streets. Homophobia was no immunization against AIDS,
and even homophobes were losing family members and friends to AIDS. This
shared suffering did much to humanize gays, even to those who had
demonized us in the first place. Increasingly, Jerry Falwell and his cronies were
left to commiserate among themselves, popping up only intermittently to tell us
that homosexuals, abortionists, and the ACLU were the reason behind 9/11,
and of course, to out Tinky Winky - that purse carrying, purple triangle
headed Teletubbie.

Nightly the networks offered us their eulogies, and the worst they say about
this propagator of hate is that he was a “polarizing” figure (yes, and Hitler had
anti-Semitic tendencies), and our stomachs sour remembering the fear and
self-doubt that this charlatan inspired throughout our formative years. Already
marginalized by society, and terrorized by AIDS, Falwell and his minions in
Moral Majority screaming that AIDS was God’s vengeance on us for loving
other boys, rocked the foundations of even the most resolute of us. More
damaging, however, than the ranting of these hate mongers, was the
attention that they received in the media, and the validation they received in
the political arena.

Falwell saw in Reagan a malleable approval seeker who would do whatever it
took to be popular, and Reagan recognized Falwell’s ability to deliver the
votes. This symbiotic relationship provided sustenance for all involved - except
of course, for the religious right that never did see the promised end to safe
abortion - or blowjobs for that matter. In truth they were just being exploited for
their money and their powerful numbers, lead around like sheep - as is their
wont.

The true legacy of Jerry Falwell, (as well as Ronald Reagan) can be seen in
the deterioration of the delegations that they claimed to serve: flocks are
thinning out at Sunday masses as people in search of spiritual direction are
choosing a more personal search and shying away from the politics of
organized religion. The phrase “I consider myself spiritual, but not religious”
has become practically a mantra. The republican party is grasping as far back
as Goldwater to offer one of their own who truly stood for republican ideals.

The eighties, along with the influence of these two men are over. And safe
abortion, while hanging from a thin thread, is still legal, and as I write this, New
Hampshire has just become the forth state in the union to recognize civil
unions, (hopefully one day they’ll kick it up a notch to Massachusetts’
legalizing of gay marriage). Funding for AIDS charities are in the billions; a far
cry from the days when Reagan preferred to simply let gay men die rather
than even acknowledge that an AIDS crisis existed. And now they are dead.
Everything that I have been taught tells me that we, as thinking, feeling people,
should at least respect the dead, if not pay homage to them. So as I look at
Falwell’s bloated corpse laying in state back in his Baptist church in
Lynchberg, I flatly say to him what I said to images of Ronald Reagan’s
weeklong marathon of a funeral, “No big loss.” Then I wonder how Tinky
Winky is doing.