Today was a beautiful, unseasonably warm day in Seattle. The temperature hit 83. This little taste of nice weather is long overdue and people were out and about enjoying themselves. It seemed like so many had a smiles on their faces.
It was in the afternoon that I heard the news that Jerry Falwell died today at 73. My immediate reaction was one of joy, but I refrained from running up and down the sunny streets of Seattle, shaking hands, hugging total strangers, singing out loud or going into gay bars and proposing a toast. My joy was followed by some sadness, mostly for all the people that Jerry Falwell had harmed in his life, and for Falwell himself, that he had lived a fantasy for his entire adult life, never understanding the real beauty and majesty of existence.
I was sad for the millions who have died of AIDS, never having the chance to live the 73 years that Falwell lives because Falwell and other religious leaders did everything they could to frustrate scientific research into HIV/AIDS in the crucial early years of the epidemic. Had our understanding of the disease grown faster, many more lives would have been saved and many more people would not have become infected. But to Falwell and other religious fanatics, AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality, and therefore it should be allowed to continue its rampage across the planet.
I totally agree with this quote:
Matt Foreman, executive director of National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, extended condolences to those close to Falwell, but added: “Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America’s anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation’s appalling response to the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, someone who demonized and vilified us for political gain and someone who used religion to divide rather than unite our nation.”
That would be appallingly slow response. We can’t know for sure, but he probably helped to kill more people that Hitler killed in concentration camps when you get right down to it. Had discovery of HIV and the drugs that have proven so effective against it taken place even a couple of years sooner it would certainly have saved millions of lives and kept millions of others from getting infected.
I’m sure that many people who were close to Falwell are saddened by his passing. I cannot even begin to put into words the sadness and grief that many of us experienced in San Francisco during the first 10-15 years of the AIDS epidemic as we not only had to watch so many young friends die but also had to endure the relentless insults and hatred of people like Jerry Falwell.
As for homosexuality, Falwell remarked, “AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals.”
We had to fight for the science and do the hard work of caring for the sick and dying while at the same time fighting the ignorance and bigotry of Christians and delusional religious fanatics like Jerry Falwell. At times it just seemed overwhelming.
If AIDS is the wrath of God against homosexuals, why have 90% of its victims been heterosexuals, women and children?
The fact is that Jerry Falwell and his “moral majority” ultimately lost the battle to keep us in the dark about HIV/AIDS. If Falwell and his comrades had won, how many more millions, even billions of people would now be dead?
We would still know absolutely nothing about HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. We would not know how to prevent its spread or treat it, and we would be decades behind in the quest to put an end to it altogether.
For all his rhetoric about being “pro-life,” he did his part to assure the deaths of millions of babies and children born with HIV.
In the end, Falwell died–just like all the people and the children that he gleefully helped push into their graves. Such is life. We all die. What differentiates us is what we do with our lives. Jerry Falwell chose a self-serving, narcissistic fantasy view of reality that put a supenatural value on his own life in relation to the lives of others. He chose hatred over compassion and the desire to understand the many bright lives he worked so hard to snuff out.
For that, I am sad.
I am sad that a man who did so much evil can delude himself into thinking he is good. I am sad and angry that there are millions of people who share his ignorant view of reality, and gave him millions of dollars to assist him in his war against science, knowledge and the lives of so many, including innocent children.
After 9/11, Falwell blamed the attack on his political opponents rather than the real killers–militant religious fanatics–who like Falwell use religion to justify their crimes against others.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Falwell said on the 700 Club, “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.’” Fellow evangelist Pat Robertson concurred with his sentiment.
I am sad that such evil can be viewed by so many as good.
It’s ironic that Tammy Faye Messner is also dying, given that Falwell took over the PTL Club after it imploded in a sex and money scandal. Messner was never as self-righteous in her hatred as people like Falwell, however. See related post: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner Stops Cancer Treatments