Death only closes a man’s reputation and determines it as good or bad.
-Joseph Addison

Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, wager of relentless Kultar Kampf on gay and lesbian America, who once stood beside Anita Bryant and uttered the words above, has died.  He had many things to say to us in his lifetime…

If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.

God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. (On the 9-11 terrorist attacks)

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One’s misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status.

We’re fighting against humanism, we’re fighting against liberalism … we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today … our battle is with Satan himself.

AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals. 

[Vice President Gore] recently praised the lesbian actress who plays ‘Ellen’ on ABC Television…I believe he may even put children, young people, and adults in danger by his public endorsement of deviant homosexual behavior…Our elected leaders are attempting to glorify and legitimize perversion.

Someone must not be afraid to say, ‘moral perversion is wrong.’ If we do not act now, homosexuals will ‘own’ America!…If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way…and our nation will pay a terrible price!

Bloomberg news reports laconically that Falwell "had a history of heart trouble."  No fooling.  Over at Ex-Gay watch David Robers says,

The Rev. Mel White, founder of Soulforce, was once associated with Falwell as a ghost writer among other things. He has devoted a great deal of time and effort into convincing Falwell to change his anti-gay views, as he remembered Falwell changing his anti-civil rights stance for African Americans decades before. Now we will never know how far this change of heart may have gone.

And that’s nobody’s fault but his.  I suppose he died thinking he was headed for that great reward in the sky.  We know what he left behind.  An America deeply divided, families torn apart where there should have only been love, and all the young gay people, who could have brought love and joyful laughter and smiles into someone’s life, and instead let Falwell’s bitter hate stick a knife into their own hearts, killing the lover they could have been.  All the joy lost to this world now.  All the quiet intimate moments of peace and contentment and fulfillment…gone.  Never to be.  Because of him.  This world is poorer and meaner for his having walked on it.  His name is written in a lot of empty places where there should have been joy.  It didn’t have to be that way.  But it was what he worked for, all his life. 

And now, the reputation is closed.  People need to think less about the hereafter they’re going to, then about what it is they will be leaving behind when they’re gone.  If you seek this man’s legacy, here it is: This world is minus a lot of love, because of him.  It’s a little colder, it’s a little meaner, for his having walked on it.