Falwell’s legacy of hate is over

I greeted the news that TV evangelist and founder of the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell was dead with a shrug. I don’t mean to be callous and I certainly don’t derive any joy from someone’s passing, but I won’t sit here and claim that Falwell had a special place in my heart.

Despite the fact that some people were

bending over backwards, this past week, to

eulogize him and paint him as a defender of Christian values and morality, the man was

anything but. I know we’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but this is someone who never had any qualms —while alive— about speaking ill of anyone whose lifestyle he didn’t agree with. Here are just some “telling” examples.

Mere days after the September 11th attacks, Falwell blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and

liberal groups for bringing them on! Yup, Ellen Degeneres and Gloria Steinem were behind the attacks, people! If Bush had only listened to Falwell, he wouldn’t have had to go to war and kill thousands of innocent people (Americans and otherwise).

He later apologized, but the whole affair stank of a chastised child being pulled by the hand and being forced to grudgingly apologize for breaking a vase, after already being caught red-handed.

In 1999, Falwell told an evangelical conference that the Antichrist was most likely a male Jew who was currently alive. Hey, that doesn’t smack of hatred and contempt for another’s beliefs at all! Besides, considering how critical he is of the

religious right every night on TV, my money’s on Jon Stewart from The Daily Show.

A month later, the man who built an empire on prejudice and hate-mongering, found a new target in Winky, the purple, purse-toting Teletubby. Winky was accused of being a “gay role model”, to which members of the gay community responded with outrage, adamant that they would never be caught dead wearing that purse and that outfit. Members of the Moral Majority, funneling millions of dollars into his church, must have been beaming with pride at that holy crusade!

When interacting with leaders of Canadian conservative organizations, Falwell never failed to express his concern over Canada’s “moral decay” — and by “decay”, he always meant Canada’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage. I may not know the Bible’s teachings by heart, but moral grand-standing and delusions of superiority were never part of the original Christian agenda, were they?

While I don’t consider myself religious, I’m not against religion. I respect (and sometimes truly envy) people who have the conviction of their faith and use it to elevate themselves as human beings. But the irony of a faith that does not allow for anything other than what it believes in, has never failed to amaze me.

Almost a century ago, well known U.S.

suffragist, Susan B. Anthony stated:”I distrust

people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires”. Falwell preached a morality that chastised, criticized and relentlessly passed

judgment and, as Mother Theresa once said so eloquently, “When you judge people, you don’t have time to love them.”