Notorious televangelist The Rev. Jerry Falwell died May 15. He was 73.
The founder of the conservative political group Moral Majority was found without a pulse in his office Tuesday at Liberty University. His physician said he had a heart condition and presumably died of a heart-rhythm abnormality.
During his prominent career, Falwell served as founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., founded Liberty University and built a religious-political empire in Moral Majority.
In his push to make the country increasingly right-wing, Falwell was one of the first to use TV to expand his ministry and was a leading vocal opponent of homosexuality who chose to focus on hot-button issues like gay marriage (rather than significant moral issues like child poverty and healthcare).
Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the media-savvy Falwell laid blame at liberals and sexual minorities: “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.’”
Other infamous remarks include his publication calling Teletubby Tinky Winky “secretly gay and morally dangerous” and saying of the Antichrist, “Of course, he’ll be Jewish.”
In a 1997 speech to People for the American Way, Falwell said, “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.”
Mel White, Falwell’s autobiographical ghostwriter who later came out and founded Soulforce, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing religious tolerance of sexual minorities, recalled Falwell saying, ‘Thank God for these gay demonstrators. If I didn’t have them, I’d have to invent them. They give me all the publicity I need.”