You're right.

I can't imagine God being so cruel as Falwell acted, represented, and spoke in light of what he believed.

The guy was bad news for christians worldwide, and in a way I'm glad he's muerto.

May the good Lord have extreme mercy on your soul, Falwell. That's all I can say.

I will repeat here what I said over at Clipmarks...

never doubted his commitment to himself...God was another issue entirely.

I hope that he does go to Heaven...and when he does a compassionate God sits him down on his knee and says..."Jerry, we need to talk...."

yes...and then tells him a nice story and gives him cocoa. but right after that, undoes all the harm to which the foul man hath lent his hand whilst alive and given room to bellow his bellicose and barbaric gay-bashing best.

Posted on this too, died unexpectedly I suppose, if only he is judged by a merciful God he may fare well. If he is judged by his God he's in deep shit.

Tried to keep the glee in check, I may not have succeeded.

Oh no...I was hoping that he spends eternity lectured by the Almighty on why he was dear old Jerry was wrong, verse by verse, chapter by chapter....

if i hoped for falwell? i guess i'd hope he's melted back into the one, unblinking, emerald-almond heart of the universe, his consciousness wiped clean and now being reshaped as the next dalai lama of dung beetles...they were a sacred insect, you know, to the ancient egyptians.

They say you say anything about the dead unless it's good.

He's dead.

Good.

I met him when the Moral Majority was first getting off the ground. I was writing for a little Quaker publication about Rev. Greg Dixon (who later went to the federal pen for tax fraud) who quit the Moral Majority because it wasn't "moral" enough for Rev. Greg. I gotta say, I liked Rev. Greg (his thing was theological purity, and the Moral Majority was too ecumenical for his tastes) better than Rev. Jerry. Maybe this awaits Rev. Jerry. Naw... I'm enough of a bad Catholic to believe in grace and mercy.

i'm glad there will always be those openhearted enough to forgive just about anyone for what they've run around preaching. i think that's important. and i know...its very kind to be graceful for him at this time of his death. that's very generous. and we are generous people. we allow people like him to profit from a life of spitting bile and aiding the hatred toward groups of people who are getting killed and made to live in shame and fear behind the type of thinking he espouses, we generously give him the freedom of speech to reinforce those lines of thought and judgment, and then once his life of invective and poisonous self-righteousness has finally withered, we generously forgive him for it. we're saints!

eh. i say good riddance to bad rubbish.

This was the bright spot in my day!!!

Allow me to repost what i wrote on my blog. I don't feel quite as forgiving.

Dancing on the graves of the dead isn’t really a particularly pleasant thing to do. I’m not a hateful person, but when I switched on the television yesterday morning, and saw that Jerry Falwell had been rushed to a hospital unconscious, my first callous thought was that unless he died, I didn’t really care about his consciousness.

Then, according to the Associated Press, he died. I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t happy, per se, but my second callous thought was, “good riddance

He may have been a nice father to someone, or a sweet grandfather, or a kindly mentor, but Jerry Falwell represented the absolute worst that mankind has to offer.

His message was one of hate, intolerance and ugliness, sugar-coated along with a twisted and poisonous infusion of dogmatic religious fervor.

In my own legal battle before the Supreme Court, my attorneys asserted that in a well known case, and subsequent movie, Reverend Jerry Falwell accused publisher Larry Flynt of damaging his reputation by publishing a parody in which Falwell was depicted having sex with his mother in an outhouse. The claim for damages was rejected on the basis that no one would believe that Jerry Falwell would have sex with his mother in an outhouse (his sister maybe, but not his mother).

In Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, the Supreme Court held that the magazine's "patently offensive" parody was constitutionally protected. Even though the parody was "gross and repugnant in the eyes of most", and was found by a jury to be an "outrageous" and intentional infliction of emotional harm, it retained First Amendment protection.

Falwell, you see, believed that the free expression of filth and divisiveness was only reserved for those who masked it under the guise of religious authority. He would frequently invoke the First Amendment whenever he was called on to defend the hate he spewed. Just not that big a supporter when the shoe was on the other foot.

He may well have galvanized millions to fight the protected notion of separation of Church and State, but his legacy is as ugly and embarrassing as it was ever impressive.

Even in a corporate controlled, free-market, capitalist, pseudo-democracy, the Office of the President holds a certain amount of standing – enough to effect policy and to get corporations to do certain things to curry favor, if nothing else.

Ronald Regan’s despicable equation of AIDS and morality resulted in not only the stigmatization and demonization of groups of people but, coupled with the hate-spewing Reverends of the Day (Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Lou Sheldon et al.) who communicated that AIDS was God’s punishment for “immoral behavior,” resulted in the deaths of millions.

In an episode that revealed the depths of his depravity, raised serious questions about his sanity, or served as a harbinger to the irrational, drug-fueled paranoia of Pastor Ted Haggard, he outed Tinky-Winky, a purple doll from the BBC’s Teletubbies as gay, suggesting his color purple and magic red bag were a tool for the homosexuals to infiltrate the minds of youth with their dreaded homosexual agenda.

On September 11, 2001, in the worst terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil, suicidal fanatics attacked the United States by smashing hijacked commercial planes into the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon. Americans, and indeed most of the world, were numbed to the core by the horror and magnitude of such destruction. Most humans were reeling, stunned into a shocked and disbelieving silence, as the impenetrable roaches of humanity's refuse at their worst and ugliest came crawling out fast and furiously. Vomiting their hate and their anger like festering pus in gaping wounds.

Reverends Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson shattered their own decaying credibility by fanatically blaming the attack on gays, lesbians, abortionists, liberals, online pornographers and civil liberties groups, declaring that Americans got what they deserved. This, of course, while their fellow Americans - and a host of other nationalities -- lay dead, suffering and smoldering under heaps of shattered concrete and melting mangled metal.

His doomsday predictions, like those of other pseudo-religious freaks, do little more than demonstrate that their God is just an ineffective, bitter, whining, geocentric crybaby who doesn't have the balls to take out the sinners - gays, civil libertarians and their ilk - but instead throws temper tantrums in the form of Muslims flying into skyscrapers in Manhattan (rather than, say, the Castro district in San Francisco or Amsterdam in The Netherlands).

To paraphrase what President George W. Bush said of terrorists: Only the terrorists themselves, or Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson, would want to live in their brutal and joyless world.

This ugly, deplorable despicable pig had the audacity to think that he was made in God’s image. Although he weaseled out of his outrageous remarks after September 11th, offering a meek apology in an attempt to pick up the shattered remnants of his reputation, as late as last week, he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he really meant what he said.

And a week later, God showed him, once and for all.

(See more photos of the Anti-Memorial)

Gee, I guess he backed the wrong God. Watch Dobson go Hindu now.
Hooray the wicked witch is dead.

A much more deserving place for our sadness Yolanda King died.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/16/america/NA-GEN-US-Obit-King.php

I like Falwell more as a corpse than a living monster. I suppose we should wait three days to be sure...

OMG - Yolanda King died?!! I just saw her speak/perform a few months ago at a huge funraising luncheon for a non-profit organization in town that provides training/support for women-owned businesses. She was one powerful woman - and so young! Rest in peace Yolanda.

Why the kindness you ask? Because I refuse to become that which I loath. Did he make me angry, yes, was he another exploitative leader of people's ignorance and pride, sure. But in hindsight I prefer to wish him well than harm, for I refuse to become like him, I will not let my anger consume him. He has pass from this world, let us deal with those that remain.

well, i dont know who asked "why the kindness," but let me just add that my spirit rises for those who no longer need to be under the shadow of a powerful preacher's words of hate. it is for the many, not this one who is now gone.

personally, i dont feel my celebrating the release of a cruel hand on a weapon is becoming "that which I loath," it is simply celebrating an adjustment of a balance that ought favor not that abuser, but those he spent so much time hating.

i know the common wisdom (religiously inspired, no less) is that it makes us Good People to forgive carte blanche. but i don't care how "good" i appear in announcing i am glad he is gone. "leader of ignorance"? well...he was much more than that. he was a vile voice that sought to harm innocents.

again, i say—emphatically—good riddance to such a voice or force in this world.

I agree with you Rafael. There is definitely more to dealing with those that live. I'm not worried about becoming him though. As much as I criticize what he stood for, I am not happy that a man died. I'm glad that there's one less voice of hatred being given credibility by the mainstream media. Even in my somewhat visceral recalling of his legacy, I wish no harm on his family or anyone else living for that matter. But glossing over what he stood for in the interests of being polite will allow people to forget that he wasn't all good as many of the obituaries seem to suggest. One can move on without forgetting.

I'm glad he is dead and am as unapologetic about it as many of the posters are as well. If I am seen as hateful toward him, so be it.One less devil to contend with in human form. What about all the people he hated without cause. People like him are able to spew as much venom as they do because some/many are willing to be overly empathetic and cut people like him slack when do not do this to people they hate. I sometimes wonder if compassionate people can empathized with the target(s) as much as the bully.

When my husband and I heard the news on CNN that Fallwell had been found unconscious, we speculated how ironic it would be if instead of dropping dead, he was put into a coma for 10 years like Terry Schivo.

I'll be glad when all the dinosaurs are dead...

oh man that would have been toooo surreal!

exactly abw. sometimes i think it's sort of a "i'm a good person because i can even forgive an evil man, hey i'm like christ over here!" forgetting the reality of the countless people harmed behind that evil. great, i say: don't harbor hate. no way. i know how that tears one down. but dont lets put allll the energy toward loving the hater. not all of it. not our main focus, eh? the man has done harm to the social outlook, dialogue, and human lives with his works. so lets put that love we feel we must bestow, if we do, toward those he hated, how bout that? that's my take on it.

um...that comment above might be hurtful to rafa and sylvia and anyone else who geniuinely feels nothing but forgiveness and respect for fallwell at this point...and so i don't mean to blanket everyone in one group with that comment, or diminish my friends' philosophy on the man.

It's less that I feel absolute forgiveness for him and more that I see the futility of doing DDR on his grave in joy because his legacy and that hate lives on. It doesn't need his body. Why would I celebrate because he's dead? What he brought to the world isn't dead. I can't forget someone's humanity even if they do a lot of evil shit -- even if I sometimes want to forget it. I can't really jibe on dancing on anyone's grave, even if that person is for all intents and purposes my enemy.

so sylvia, you see no merit to celebrating the cessation of an evil in the world?

or is it that did you not see his deeds as evil?

yes, others will be evil. but there is no denying that he had a voice and a platform and what he used it for. so...nothing? i would think that if a person felt anger or a righteous indignation at what he often preached, there would have to be a converse emotion when that injustice was silenced.

just to clarify: i don't mean to be antagonistic. i hope it doesn't read that way.

i feel wrong about saying that people who made a point of forgiving Fallwell as a main focus were doing so because they felt it made them important or special "like christ." that's assuming a little, and grouping people too much.

but i see nothing wrong with a great, big sigh of relief and exultation that a hateful man is gone. i mean...why feel anything at all, if i can't feel good about that? i'm not saying "i hope he suffered," or anything. just happy to hear his mouth can no longer speak. if i should not feel good that he's gone just because someone else can take his place eventually...why try for anything at all? why make a bed in the morning? why feel glad that hitler's gone if eventually someone will take his place? right? it only makes sense to me to celebrate when a force for harm is gone. and i see Falwell as a force for harm. that's all. an ignorant man making profit off of others' pain and persecution.

for what reason would a sense of Truth be instilled in me for, if not to rejoice the absence of that which would work against it?

so sylvia, you see no merit to celebrating the cessation of an evil in the world?

or is it that did you not see his deeds as evil?

Even if I said, "a man who did evil deeds is dead," do a man's deeds really die with him completely? I kinda feel strange because I've always had this conflict, even when I was younger, but it's hard to articulate. I remember thinking that way a few times surrounding someone's death, and then I realized I was making that person an avatar for an action/actions I thought no other person should do or should be capable of doing. And I don't remember any particular place where I said I forgave Falwell, but I guess from my actions that's what I am doing or have done or am trying to do. You'd have to forgive me because I really don't see it that way.

And I feel like people are trying to say that because I won't breathe that sigh of relief because he's dead, I condone the things Falwell stood for and wouldn't stand against his evil deeds and their effects if he were still alive. And I think that's more hurtful to me than anything else.

if i should not feel good that he's gone just because someone else can take his place eventually...why try for anything at all? why make a bed in the morning? why feel glad that hitler's gone if eventually someone will take his place? right? it only makes sense to me to celebrate when a force for harm is gone. and i see Falwell as a force for harm. that's all. an ignorant man making profit off of others' pain and persecution.

I guess I see Falwell as a man who joined that force rather than the force itself. And I don't necessarily think that absolves him from responsibility for what he's done -- that's what I'm confused about. How is it people are conceiving that I hold this stance? I'll have to get back to this later in my own way and at my own time; I have to go get ready for an event right now. I'm sorry because I think I'm taking things off-topic.

firstly, sylvia, you may want to see my last words in this comment before you go any further.

otherwise, points you bring up:

But what evil has really ceased, Nez? My fight against the things Falwell preached was never against Falwell himself and it still isn't.

so...humans dont' matter as symbols of what they do? if a man is an agent of intolerance to the point of espousing harm and hate against gays (or women, or minorities, etc) i should never look at the man...only at...what? what is left if we don't attach the intangible to the tangible?

Maybe I'm not cut out for this type of good vs. evil war thing; I don't know.

welll...these are often religious words. and he was a religious man. so i use his language. i am not religious. but he was not a "good" man even by my definitions.

And I don't remember any particular place where I said I forgave Falwell

uh...i think you are right. hmm.

And I feel like people are trying to say that because I won't breathe that sigh of relief because he's dead, I condone the things Falwell stood for and wouldn't stand against his evil deeds and their effects if he were still alive.

yes..i can see how that would be unfair. can't assume that.

I guess I see Falwell as a man who joined that force rather than the force itself.

again...the only symbols we have here are humans. so i guess that's why i hold him as a symbol of what he did. he is the one who chose that alliance of his self and his beliefs and deeds. and he is gone....damn, man. he talked so much self-righeous shit and hate. i AM glad i dont have to hear him quoted all the time (well..new quotes, that is!), i AM glad he is gone. even if he was not THE force. damn. i've had hurtful, abusive people leave my life after a long time and i was damn glad they were gone. i guess that's how i feel about him. but you are right that it makes no sense to assume those who don't feel that relief also don't feel the same about the harm he did.

How is it people are conceiving that I hold this stance?

i'm sorry. you are right. i had thought you commented above as rafa did. i was mixing up your own page on it...and i should not. i didn't mean to draw you in here. so...you've made some good points, maybe i have, maybe we both have things to think on. or maybe i shouldn't comment in those last moments i'm awake in the day.