So that's some consolation.
Falwell, as Sarah reminds us, is living proof that God doesn't smite the deranged:
[Falwell] created a furor in 1999 when one of his publications suggested that the purse-carrying "Teletubbies" character Tinky Winky was gay.
Alas, Falwell is also living proof that if there is a God or Gods, He, She, They, or It lets or let hatred, bigotry, and the lust for power go unsmitten. I quote the whole transcript of Falwell and Robertson, post-9/11, just to revel in the vileness:
JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad.
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."
"Believe," eh? Belief is the wound that knowledge heals. And Falwell wasn't just a wound on the body politic, he was a running sore. Witness the Clinton Chronicles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Good thing I'm so fucking civil.
PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.
JERRY FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time--
fuhrergefluffencalling upon God.PAT ROBERTSON: Amen.
Indeed.
I've been wondering which circle of Dante's Inferno a just God, if any, would have consigned Falwell to, and I really do think it would be the Ninth Circle, Fourth Section, "Traitors to Benefactors"--closest to Satan, and completely sunk in ice as cold as their hearts. Why?
Falwell's benefactor was the United States of America and the Constitution that gave him freedom of religion--the freedom Falwell abused to corrupt his own faith by using it as a political tool to gain power and wealth.
I understand the punishment lasts a long time down there...
NOTE Er, if I can slip into the much more comfortable irony for a moment, maybe I should have waited three days before making this post? Just to be safe?
- lambert's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Front page
Comments
In three days...
... Mr. Falwell will be ascending bodily to heaven, doncha think?
www.vastleft.com
Dallas says "bye"
from the Dallas Morning News, excerpt;
'But speaking for himself – not as Perkins' dean – Dr. Lawrence decried what he said was Mr. Falwell's blurring of the lines between church and state and inattention to the church's role in helping the poor.
At Cathedral of Hope, the Dallas mega-church attended predominantly by gays and lesbians, Mr. Falwell is remembered as a staunch opponent of homosexuals' rights.
"While our sympathy goes out to his family and congregation, our hope is that Rev. Falwell's influence will fade quickly," said the Rev. Michael Piazza.'
at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/...
Ruth
Smitten
Again, God is not in the business of administering earthly justice. That job is left to us humans. Although God doesn't particularly encourage the human pursuit of justice, neither does He discourage it.
As for whether Falwell is getting his just desserts in the Great Beyond, we don't have the ability to answer that one while we're here. It could be that Falwell was kept here 73 years because that's how long it took to build a fire hot enough to consume him.
...for the rest of us
Thanks, guys -- I didn't want to outright happy dance
yesterday over this news, because, after all, I'm not without a modicum of decency myself.
But the guy's dead, now. So, if he was even remotely close to right about any of the stuff he said, he's met his reward in the afterlife.
Whether it's the one he expected, and led his followers to seek, ... quien sabe?
Personally, I hope to outlive not just this Jerry, but Jerry Jones, the defiler of the Cowboys; and Pat Robertson, the gap-toothed arbiter of all things 'holy' via hatefulness barely less virulent than that of the Westboro Baptist wingnut buffoons; and Dr. James Dobson, authoritarian misanthrope extraordinaire, author of the "you WILL OBEY me" school of child psychology.
Just 'cause I want to live in a better world than one with them in it, let alone having any power to affect it.
Are Dobson's kids grown up now?
I mean, has the generation of kids that grew up being beaten by authority figures reached adulthood yet?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
Dobson's 'kids' = Gitmo recruits
I believe the pattern is pretty established that abused kids grow into abusive adults. I think the 'kids' of this movement were very much in evidence in the audience for the GOPervert debate.
Ruth