I’m not usually one to make light of someone else’s misery, and I cannot bring myself to wish my worst enemies harm. However, I’m also no good at faking emotions, pretending to care when I don’t, or hiding how I truly feel about a situation. My face can’t lie, as my mother has often reminded me. Neither can my heart. So I must confess that when I learned about the recent death of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, a smile spread across my face. In fact, I emailed my co-worker Julie to make her aware of Falwell’s passing: "Ding-dong! The witch is dead!" I am very sorry for the heartache his family must feel. Death is most difficult for the loved ones left behind, not the one doing the dying. But it’s not as if Falwell dedicated his entire life to spreading the Christian message of tolerance, acceptance, brotherly love, and non-judgment. Rather, he dedicated much of his earthly energy to stoking the fires of controversy, spite, hatred, mistrust, and downright stupidity. If you don’t believe me, read on and consider the words that have dripped from Falwell’s tongue.

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions," he once remarked, as if blind allegiance to any cause is good or even acceptable. Open-mindedness was not one of Falwell’s strong points. "If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being," he once declared. On women’s rights, he once remarked, "I listen to feminists and all these radical gals. Most of them are failures. They’ve blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That’s all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they’re mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They’re sexist. They hate men. That’s their problem." Boy, could Falwell spread the stupidity around, like thick, bitter jam on Texas toast. I had no idea that women want the same rights as men because women hate men. The things I didn’t learn in college!

Falwell was never more vitriolic than when he spewed venom against the GLBT community. In fact, he seemed to have an odd obsession with anyone who dared step a toe over the line of Leave It to Beaver sexuality. Falwell once remarked, "I truly cannot imagine men with men, women with women, doing what they were not physically created to do, without abnormal stress and misbehavior." You would think Falwell himself had created humankind and could declare exactly what we were and were not meant to do with our bodies and our love. He also stated, "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!"

I had no idea that we were trying to take over the country, and I’ve been out of the closet for fifteen years. I missed that pink memo. I say to Falwell’s ghost, we are the ones who paid a terrible price for your hateful words—as the GLBT community, as Americans, as citizens of one small world. You made people loathe us at a time when we needed caring, help, and medical assistance. President Reagan turned a blind eye to AIDS when it was just a "gay disease," but you had the nerve to actually tell us we deserve it: "AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." Falwell never betrayed his idiocy more clearly than when he launched a virtual Christian jihad against poor little Tinky Winky. Falwell thought he and his conservative cronies should control our thoughts, our actions, and even our children’s television shows.

But alas, give a fool enough rope, and he will hang himself. In Falwell’s case, give a loudmouthed bigot enough media exposure and he’ll ruin himself. Falwell fell out of most Americans’ good graces when he blamed the heartrending September 11 attacks on everyone but determined terrorists and questionable foreign policy. A few days after one of the greatest tragedies in American history, Falwell couldn’t wait to exploit the attacks for political gain and television airtime. He declared, "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy forty 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.’" If gays and lesbians and pagans and pro-choice women had the power to force the hands of madmen to fly planes into buildings, we certainly would have directed that power toward guaranteeing equal rights for everyone long before now.

Jerry, you were the one who worked your whole life to take power away from people. I point the finger back in your face and say, "You left this world a much worse place than how you found it. You twisted religion and politics into a disgusting, sour pretzel that chokes us all." I just cannot bring myself to mourn a man who caused so much heartache and championed so much ignorance during his 73 years on this earth. Matt Forman, Executive Director of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force, shares my sentiments. In a press release issued after Falwell’s death, Forman noted: "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."