Jerry Fallwell is dead

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Which means there's a little less bigotry in the world now.

Oh, is that insensitive? Too fucking bad. Consider some of the evidence here, just from the past few years. There is so much from which to choose, but let's go back to what he said shortly after 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.'

He has also compared homosexuality to bestiality and crack addiction. Here's what he said last summer about gays in Hollywood:

And don't, don't ever be proud of sin. You know, you almost got to be a homosexual to be recognized in the entertainment industry anymore. Ellen [Degeneres], and all the rest. I love them, pray for their souls, but they're immoral.

Under cloak of religion, and sometimes not even, Falwell spent his life spewing hatred with a smile.

Like my friend Steve Benen, I was consistently "repelled and appalled," all the more so because of his popularity, legitimation in the mainstream media, and position of leadership on the religious right and within the Republican Party generally. Steve has a useful look back over Falwell's career and finds yet more bigotry. Consider what he said in 1993: "We must never allow our children to forget that this is a Christian nation. We must take back what is rightfully ours." It should come as no surprise that he claimed, in 1999, that the Antichrist is Jewish. And consider also that he once said that "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals" (in Atrios).

And so on and so on.

(For more, see Digby. On the right, Ed Morrissey has some nice things to say.)

I simply find no reason to be generous. One may be saddened by his death, as by the death of any human being, but one must not forget just what sort of a man he was.