May 18, 2007  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Rev. Jerry Falwell, a man whom critics called “a tremendous homophobe” and “leader of American’s anti-gay industry,” died Tuesday at age 73.

Falwell’s death, apparently caused by a heart condition, unleashed a flood of reaction from gay activists that offered condolences to the evangelist’s family and friends, but condemned his long record of attacks on gays and AIDS patients.

“As I remember Rev. Falwell’s life, I also remember all of the families of people who have died of AIDS,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign.

“Rev. Falwell’s legacy is not about the tenets of Jesus’ ministry such as healing the sick and standing with the disenfranchised but about shunning and ridiculing those who had suffered and died of AIDS and their families.”

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, said that gays “will always remember him as a founder and leader of American’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.”

Founder of the staunchly conservative Moral Majority Coalition and Liberty University in Virginia, Falwell repeatedly railed against gays and homosexuality.

He famously included gays and lesbians among those he considered responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“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,” he said. “I point the finger in their face and say ‘You helped this happen.’”

On other occasions, he described AIDS as God’s punishment for gays and deemed homosexuality unnatural.

Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, said Falwell “never moderated his position” on gay issues.

“He never missed an opportunity to kick our better angels to the curb and capitalize on our lesser demons to advance his career,” he said.

‘The mess he made’

Gay activists who knew and worked against Falwell reviled his efforts to mix church and state.

Rev. Mel White, the gay former ghostwriter for Falwell and founder of Soulforce, an interfaith movement that supports gay rights, said the Moral Majority advanced a narrow and oppressive agenda.

“He’s left us with this terrible blight on the church called fundamentalism,” White said. “He’s also left millions of people confused about sexual orientation. That’s the mess he made.”

John Marble of National Stonewall Democrats said Falwell “was the fulcrum that made evangelical Christianity into the political creature” it is today.

“I would say that Jesus called his disciples to be righteous, not Republican,” said Marble, the son of a Southern Baptist preacher. “And then Jerry Falwell came along and reversed that position.”

Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 as a political action committee to oppose gays, pornography and President Carter, among other things.

As his influence grew, Falwell visited Congress to speak on several issues. On one such trip, he sought congressional intervention to stop Washington from overturning its sodomy laws.

Frank Kameny, a longtime gay activist who lives in Washington, said Falwell won that 1981 battle in part because few congressmen dared then oppose the Moral Majority.

“Obviously we were upset by it, but what could we do?” Kameny said. “That was right at the height of his Moral Majority’s influence.”

Falwell’s intervention kept sodomy laws on the books in D.C. until 1992 when they were finally erased.

Falwell’s anti-gay rhetoric would occasionally reach what some considered absurd proportions. In 1999, Falwell’s National Liberty Journal warned parents that a character known as Tinky Winky on British children’s show “The Teletubbies,” might be gay.

Falwell justified the “outing” by writing that Tinky Winky has the voice of a boy but carries a purse. “He is purple — the gay-pride color and his antenna is shaped like a triangle — the gay-pride symbol.”

‘Sincerely stupid’

Activists said they repeatedly tried to temper Falwell’s attitudes toward gay issues, but their overtures were not well received.

Marble said his 1999 meeting with Falwell was slated to include a dinner, but when mealtime came, Falwell served only water so he would not “break bread” with Marble and other gays in his delegation.

Despite such incidents, White said he remained hopeful that Falwell might someday “come around.” As such, White took any opportunity to meet with Falwell.

“If we give up on our enemies, what have we gained?” he said. “If we walk away saying they’re hopeless, what kind of position does that put us in?”

But White, who ...