Interesting celebrations.
2 Corinthians 2:14-16 KJV Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. (15) For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: (16) To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?
I report and link. You decide. - J :)
From a Bay Area Reporter Blogs post, Falwell 'anti-memorial' tonight:
Falwell 'anti-memorial' tonight [/] Tuesday, May 15, 2007
LGBT [[Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual]] activists will meet at 18th and Castro streets at 5 p.m. today (Tuesday, May 15) to hold an “anti-memorial” following the death earlier today of anti-gay preacher the Reverend Jerry Falwell. Bring your Tinky Winky dolls. [/] Filed by Cynthia Laird in News [My ellipses and emphasis]
From a Beyond Chron .org article, Good Riddance to Jerry Falwell:
Good Riddance to Jerry Falwell [/] by Tommi Avicolli Mecca‚ May. 16‚ 2007
In the Castro, May 15 was anything but a day to mourn. [/] News that right-wing Christian minister Jerry Falwell had died that morning brought about 30 queers to the corner of 18th and Castro during rush hour to attend an “anti-memorial” that was full of good cheer. Representatives of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of gay male nuns that Falwell had once attacked, were on hand to help exorcise the spirit of the hate-spewing fundamentalist preacher.
On queervision, an internet discussion group, message lines in emails hailed “ding-dong the witch is dead” and “Falwell is dead day.” Entries on the SF Bay Guardian blog, too, expressed no regret about the 73-year-old bigot’s sudden passing in his office at Liberty University in Virginia.
Some may think it’s tasteless to speak ill of the dead, but certainly not in the case of Jerry Falwell. The man made a lucrative career out of bashing the LGBT [[Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual]] community and fighting any gains that women made, such as Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in America. He was also a segregationist who once denounced South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a foe of apartheid, as a phony and not a proper representative of Blacks.
In 1965, Falwell criticized the work of Dr. Martin Luther King and dubbed the civil rights struggle the “civil wrongs movement.” He regularly featured racists such as former Alabama Governor George Wallace on his “Old-Time Gospel Hour” TV Program. His voter registration drive among Christian fundamentalists in the late 70s is credited as having given Ronald Reagan his presidential victory in 1980.
While riding high on that newfound political influence, Falwell suffered a couple of rather humiliating defeats, one at the hands of Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, after the publication ran a spoof of Falwell’s “first time,” a supposedly incestuous relationship with his mother in an outhouse. Falwell sued. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which surprisingly backed Flynt’s right to parody the public figure. It was a great victory for free speech. [/] In 1984, a self-proclaimed gay pagan, Jerry Sloan, sued Falwell after he slammed the gay Metropolitan Community Church during a TV debate. Sloan accused Falwell of characterizing MCC as “brute beasts” and “a vile and satanic system.” Falwell denied that he said those things and told Sloan he’d pay him $5,000 if he produced proof. Sloan produced a tape. Falwell refused to pay, so Sloan sued and won.
Falwell eventually backed down from his stand on segregation, but never relented on his attacks on homosexuality. He not only described gay sexuality as “Satan’s diabolical attack upon the family,” but also believed that AIDS was God’s way of punishing queers, as well as “God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
In 1999, Falwell caused a huge stir by outing Tinky-Winky, a BBC children’s show character who wore purple and had an inverted triangle on his head. He also carried a magic bag. Producers denied that Tinky-Winky was queer and said that there was nothing wrong with a man carrying a purse. [[N.B. Actually Tinky Winky was admittedly and designedly queer. More on this later, God willing.]]
Perhaps one of Falwell’s most tasteless quips was after 9/11: He blamed the attack on the Twin Towers on “the pagans and the feminists and the gays.” He was later forced to apologize. [/] Falwell’s is a legacy that leaves nothing to be proud of. [/] Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical, southern Italian, working-class, atheist queer performer and writer whose work can be seen at www.avicollimecca.com. [My ellipses and emphasis]
From a Bay Area Reporter article, Anti-gay Reverend Jerry Falwell dies:
Anti-gay Reverend Jerry Falwell dies [/] by Bob Roehr
[...] Falwell came to prominence through the Moral Majority, a conservative religious-political group that he founded in 1979. Opposition to gays and lesbians was a cornerstone of the group's activities. The Moral Majority was disbanded in 1989.
He was perhaps the single person most responsible for making religious conservatives the political force that they are today. The Moral Majority represented a shift among fundamentalists from an inner direction to active engagement in the political process. It is difficult to recall that, given the ubiquitous involvement of conservative religious groups in politics today.
Falwell referred to gays as "deviants" and "sodomites," and played a leading role in the backlash against the first wave of gay rights legislation. He joined Anita Bryant in 1977 to repeal an equal rights law in Dade County, Florida, and participated in a similar effort in California the following year. [/] Over the course of his public life, Falwell devolved from the effective political power who had played a significant role in the election of Ronald Reagan as president, to the absurdity of his 1999 warning to parents that the Teletubby Tinky Winky was a subversive part of the homosexual agenda. [[N.B. Actually Tinky Winky was admittedly and designedly queer. More on this later, God willing.]] "He is purple – the gay pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle – the gay pride symbol," said Falwell.
The Reverend Mel White worked as a ghostwriter for Falwell before coming to terms with his own homosexuality and confronting Falwell on his homophobia through the organization Soulforce. White said, "It breaks my heart to think that Jerry died without ever discovering the truth about God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender children. I sincerely hope that one day his school and his church will have a change of heart."
[...] While expressing condolences to the family, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman said, "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."
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation advised the media of Falwell's "history of denigrative comments" on gays and urged it to "reflect on the outdated attitudes and beliefs he embodied." [/] Much of the mainstream media paid scant attention to the suggestion, glossing over the fact that much of Falwell's success was built upon anti-gay demagoguery.
Many of the rank and file within the LGBT community responded to Falwell's death by circulating online the acerbic comment of Bette Davis on learning of the death of her cinematic rival Joan Crawford: "You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good Joan Crawford is dead. Good!"
The popular blog Wonkette, the D.C. gossip, was positively vitriolic, writing, "At a time like this, people deserve sympathy and good wishes ... except for Falwell, who was an evil sonofabitch. Over his long career as a vile televangelist building an empire of bigotry from the donations of poor people, Falwell has supported South African apartheid, called AIDS an invention of Jesus to punish gays, attacked Martin Luther King and U.S. civil rights, and blamed 9/11 on feminists and homosexuals." [My ellipses and emphasis]
