Jerry Falwell Dies, Bigots Everywhere in Mourning

The Baptist Minister, racial segregationist, anti-gay activist, and eminent Republican champion Jerry Falwell has just died.

Prominent since the 1960s, when he spoke out against Martin Luther King on his "Old Time Gospel Hour" TV program, Falwell founded the Republican political action group he named "The Moral Majority" in 1979. One of the architects of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential victory and a major source of support for current president George W. Bush, Falwell will be missed by Republicans nationwide.

Falwell visited South Africa in the early 1980s to support South African President Botha and the segregationist Apartheid regime there, urging conservative Christians in America to invest in Botha's brutal government.

In 1994, Falwell produced and sold a tape on his Republican, conservative Christian TV show attacking President Bill Clinton. The faux-documentary featured Paula Jones denouncing Clinton and went on to claim that both Bill and Hillary Clinton were involved in a massive drug-smuggling operation, and that the president and Mrs. Clinton had murdered a number of their critics. In 1996, Falwell's dream of the destruction of America's public school system came close to success when Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole made it a platform plank in his campaign. More recently, Falwell claimed, while on Pat Robertson's 700 Club TV show, that gays, feminists, and members of the ACLU (among other liberal Americans), were directly responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center of September 11, 2001.

Although a strong supporter of the current Republican administration (especially its "Faith Based Initiatives"), Falwell suffered from poor health in recent years; his survival of a cardiac arrest prompted a personal call of support to him from President George W. Bush on May 30, 2005.

Jerry Falwell's impact on the GOP of today cannot be overestimated, and conservative Republicans everywhere are sure to mourn his death. I await the inevitable public statement about Falwell's passing from President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who gave the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University in 2006. The self-styled "Dr." Falwell founded Liberty University and was its chancellor at the time of his death. Falwell leaves behind the campus, a history of dedicated work against civil rights and public education, and a fundamentalist Republican party he helped in large part to create.