By now most of us know that Jerry Falwell has kicked the bucket. [It just might be time for me to break out my "Jerry Falwell is the Antichrist" button and sell it on e-Bay.] Wikipedia has an entry for him which now includes his date of death. The Positive Atheism site has two categories of Falwell quotes-- "scary" and "more reasonable." Jerry Falwell did not care for folks who aren't heterosexual, people with A.I.D.S., feminists, feminazis, the separation of church and state, stem cell research, or the A.C.L.U. Some of us hated him back when the A.I.D.S. crisis was hitting a peak, and hated him more for blaming 9/11 on us. Yep, I was one of the folks who mocked him for deciding that Barney the Dinosaur was demonic and for deciding that one of the Teletubbies was "gay." [Understand please that I don't have any special love for Barney the demonic dinosaur or for the Teletubbies. It's just that I think it might have been better for Jerry Falwell to attack the trash on television as a whole and in the movies rather than focusing on two innocuous cartoons of the G-rated variety. Anyone who is attempting to live a life apart from the world would do well to get rid of the one-eyed monster in their living room. Or at least limit its' worship.] Other folks loved him for calling things as he saw them according to his fundamentalist take on the christian bible.
The Positive Atheism site leaves out his apology given via C.N.N. shortly after his appearance on Pat Robertson's 700 Club. In his apology, Falwell makes a clear distinction between who was responsible for 9/11 [the terrorists] and who has helped to create a secular environment which led the American people away from his Savior [that be us]. Cal Thomas, a conservative and a Christian, presents a nice eulogy of the man. Public viewing arrangements have been set. I hope that all of us will remember to behave ourselves and not use a family's and a university's grief as a time to haul out the protest signs.
For any fools who are "glad" to see the death of an "adversary," please know this: Jerry Falwell is survived by two sons who are both ready and able to carry on his ministry. Wishing for the death of someone we don't particularly care for is an exercise in mental masturbation best left in childhood. There will be folks coming up after Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, George Bush, Jesse Jackson, and all the rest just as there will be folks coming up after us. Now is not the time to proclaim our superior thinking, religious or non-theistic viewpoints, or political ideology.
radical sapphoq
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