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SOUTHERN VOICE
OCTOBER 7/1993
Yet another
decision that
can affect
your health.
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© 1992 Saturn Corporation
Falwell bashes to revive old glory
Continued from page 7
changed—both on segregation, which he no
longer condones, and on the role of preachers.
He says he reread his Bible and learned that it
did not recommend segregation. And when
the Supreme Court legalized abortion with its
Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973, he tumbled
into the political arena with a vengeance,
preaching vehemently against abortion, Com
munism, homosexuality, feminism and every
thing else that, to him, stood in the way of a
righteous America.
In 1976, Falwell’s organized a series of “I
Love America” rallies, staged to celebrate (he
country’s 200th birthday. He carried the suc
cess of those rallies to Florida to support Anita
Bryant’s anti-gay “Save the Children” crusade
in 1978.
That same year, a group of like-minded
conservative activists—the National Christian
Action Coalition’s Robert Billings, Religious
Roundtable founder Ed McAteer, Conserva
tive Caucus director Howard Phillips and con
servative direct mail fund raiser Richard
Viguerie—contacted Falwell about drawing up
“a game plan to save America.”
The Moral Majority was bom.
It was a political and financial success. In
1980, Ronald Reagan was swept into office
and a dozen liberal Democratic senators were
swept out, many of whom had been targeted
by Falwell’s organization. Pollster Lou Harris
credits the Moral Majority with delivering
Reagan’s victory—without it, Harris believes,
Jimmy Carter would have won by a percent
age point. At its high point in 1985, the Moral
Majority grossed Sll million.
Falwell became the confidant of presidents,
offering advice on everything from domesdc
policy to Supreme Court appointments. These
were heady years, but the writing was on the
wall.
As the 1980s wore on, the scandals of Jim
Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart caused serious
financial and credibility problems for all
televangelists. Falwell, in a series of loans,
borrowed S100 million and mortgaged his
church 11 times. He made an attempt to revive
Bakker’s PTL empire that was spectacularly
unsuccessful. Liberty University, the college
he started in Lynchburg, had part of its campus
foreclosed on in 1991. At one point, Falwell
was even involved in a company with ties to
disgraced investment banker Charles Keating.
As of this summer, according to a report
in the magazine Mother Jones, Falwell’s vari
ous organizations owed the IRS $5 million.
Politically, too, Falwell has seen his role
as chief lion of the religious right usurped by
people such as Pat Robertson (Falwell backed
George Bush, not Robertson, in the 1988 Re
publican presidential race) and Pat Buchanan.
Declaring that he had accomplished what he
had set out to do, Falwell shut the Moral Ma
jority down in 1989.
“[Falwell] was very much an example of
the religious right as it existed in the 1980s,”
said Arthur Kropp, president of People for the
American Way, a progressive group hated by
Falwell because of its close monitoring of the
activities of conservative leaders. “What
Falwell had was a direct mail list that gener
ated a lot of money and gave him a lot of TV
time. But he never built a grassroots organiza
tion and never seemed inclined to. Jerry Falwell
was into self-promotion.”
But though he may not be the power he
once was, Falwell is still on TV and still able
to spread his view of what is and isn’t accept
able in America. And gay men and lesbians
are what he finds unacceptable.
“He’s worse than he was, particularly on
the anti-gay front,” says Kropp. “He’s as shrill
and incendiary as he can be, but that’s not
going to gel him back into the position he had
before.”
But the question is whether gays and lesbi
ans can take that chance. Falwell is dabbling
again in politics. He has started a new organi
zation, the Liberty Alliance. With the election
of Bill Clinton as president, he has a new
target. Clinton, he regularly preaches, has
turned his back on God and is taking the coun
try with him on the road to hell.
He delivers his message through lies and
distortions: “We don’t know how AIDS is
contracted;” ‘This gay civil rights legislation
could also penalize pastors ultimately and all
ministers for preaching against homosexuality
from a Biblical perspective as sin;” “A bigot is
someone who has Biblical truth on their side
and is not afraid to preach and deliver that
truth, even against the mobs;” “It was as if
Sodom and Gomorrah had stepped off the pages
of the Old Testament and visited our nation’s
capital.”
At his most basic level, Jerry Falwell’s
crusade is about his own power, his own vi
sion, his own place in history. America fell for
it once, and Falwell seems to be trying to gel
America to fall for it again.
As Kropp puts it, “[Falwell] is the father of
the religious right movement. He just hales
being out of the spotlight. He’s not comfort
able being a founding father who fades into
the background.”
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