by Chris Crain
{ITAL We do ourselves no favors when we stoop to
the rhetoric of Jerry Falwell and his followers. }
The death of televangelist Jerry Falwell has brought the expected chorus of praise from the right and expressions of good riddance to the "hate-monger" from the left. I am no fan of Falwell, but I've always thought that gay critics did themselves and our cause no good by portraying Falwell as some sort of hateful villain.
Jerry Falwell no doubt became intoxicated with the notoriety that came from always pushing the rhetorical envelope to the extreme, and he rationalized away the damage he did as necessary to bring attention to his cause (and him). Ultimately, that pattern led to his own undoing, as his pronouncements on 9/11 and Tinky Winky diminished his mainstream political influence.
But a hater? No. Those of us who have real, firsthand experience with fundamentalist Christians, who have known them as our friends and our family, know that the vast majority are not motivated by hate. They may be willfully ignorant of our lives and the lives of others they judge, but most are not animated by some irrational animus toward gays, pregnant women and so on. The same, I believe, can be said of Jerry Falwell.
My best guess, having watched Falwell closely for years, is that like so many other fundamentalist Christians, he overreacted with fear and worry to the social change of the sexual revolution by retreating to his Bible, where he found support for dressing up his own prejudices as "traditional values."
The problem is that looking to an ancient manuscript to understand modern social issues makes about as much sense as consulting a text of similar vintage for scientific or medical information. Not only has our knowledge of the human body, physics and biology advanced dramatically since biblical times; so has our understanding of human beings, including their emotional, psychological and sexual makeup.
In broad strokes, the Bible offers values that, when followed, have generally served humankind well. But when you drill down to the details, the usefulness of the Bible (or the Koran) is limited by the state of things when it was written.
Even still, Falwell isn't simply a naive shepherd with a naive flock, led astray by an old book. The evidence was all around them of the enormous capacity for error in using the Bible to guide the resolution of modern social conflicts. Just in this country's short history, Falwell and his fundamentalist forbears have been on the wrong side of almost every "culture war" we've fought, whether over slavery, Jim Crow, Prohibition or women's rights.
During the 1950s and '60s, Falwell himself was among the Southern ministers who challenged the Supreme Court rulings dismantling Jim Crow laws as contrary to the biblical commandment to keep the races segregated.
He later apologized, and perhaps Falwell and other fundamentalist Christian leaders were sufficiently chastened by their colossal error to retreat from politics until the late 1970s. When they re-emerged, led by Falwell's formation of the Moral Majority in 1979, it's a mystery how they were presumed to have any credibility left on contemporary social issues. We Americans are condemned by our short memories.
And Falwell and his ilk were doomed to repeat their mistakes. Almost immediately, Falwell voiced support for the white apartheid government in South Africa and called Bishop Desmond Tutu "a phony." Again, Falwell apologized but remained undaunted.
The fact that Falwell and his fellow travelers suited up for battle against gays with no humility or regard for their own very checkered history speaks loudly of their arrogance. But not of hate.
The distinction is one with a difference. When Falwell's critics call him and his followers hate-mongers, there are millions who either are fundamentalist Christians or who know fundamentalist Christians and know the charge to be false.
It is a reverse example of what we like to say about ourselves; that once fair-minded people know us as gay people and come to know our relationships, they can see for themselves that the caricatures are unfair and inaccurate. Well, the same goes for the cries of hate aimed at fundamentalists, however accurately that describes how their condemnations are received by us.
We would do far better to engage the rhetoric of fundamentalist Christians in a way that is more respectful but every bit as direct. We should answer their opposition to our civil rights by pointing out that they are (once again) attempting to legislate their own theological views, in the same way (if not based on the same theology) as the fundamentalist Muslims we call the enemies of America.
It can be difficult not to stoop to their rhetoric; to not caricature them the way they have caricatured us. I remember being among the first of my friends to slap a bumper sticker on my car that said, "Hate Is Not A Family Value." Well, hate was not a Falwell value, either. So let's not hate him back.
