Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Falwell Dead
Jerry Falwell is dead. I thought of writing a lot of funny stuff, riffing off a lot of Falwell's own statements -- such as his blaming civil libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters for the terrorist attacks on 9/11, or saying that AIDS is God's punishment for a society that tolerates gays -- to ask what he'd done to make God angry enough to kill him.
In the end, I find that evil as the man was in life, I can take no pleasure in his death.
Since we are in the middle of a campaign by the Discovery Institute to label supporters of evolution as Nazis, I will point out that Falwell, an opponent of the American civil rights movement and supporter of South African apartheid, was a card-carrying creationist.
Although he muted his criticism of what he called "The Civil Wrongs Movement" when open racism became socially unacceptable after the victory of the civil rights movement, in the days when voting rights activists were being hunted down and killed in the South, Falwell knew just where he -- and God -- stood:
“If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision [Brown v. Board of Education] would never have been made…. " said Falwell in 1958. "The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
In the end, I find that evil as the man was in life, I can take no pleasure in his death.
Since we are in the middle of a campaign by the Discovery Institute to label supporters of evolution as Nazis, I will point out that Falwell, an opponent of the American civil rights movement and supporter of South African apartheid, was a card-carrying creationist.
Although he muted his criticism of what he called "The Civil Wrongs Movement" when open racism became socially unacceptable after the victory of the civil rights movement, in the days when voting rights activists were being hunted down and killed in the South, Falwell knew just where he -- and God -- stood:
“If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision [Brown v. Board of Education] would never have been made…. " said Falwell in 1958. "The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line.”
